Rising from R&B with whispers of jazz and soul, funk got here of age within the Seventies, the place a succession of artists from James Brown to Sly & The Household Stone and Parliament would convey these clean syncopated basslines and regular, irresistible drum grooves into file shops.
Like jazz, funk was typically marked by lengthy, prolonged exercises. Although many three-minute pop songs profited from its unfastened, relaxed vibes, in its purest guise funk was far more freeform, permitting its musicians area to experiment and indulge.
Earlier than disco got here to steal its crown (although even that style owed a hefty debt to funk), it was the dominant Black sound of the 70s, creating superstars in Chaka Khan and Rick James in addition to acclaimed instrumentalists together with Bootsy Collins and Eddie Hazel. It even made its approach to British shores, with Common White Band and Hello-Pressure replicating these roomy rhythms.
It was ultimately assimilated into pop, with artists similar to Degree 42, Prince and Stylish tightening the sound to make it chart-friendly. Funk would additionally inform early hip-hop discs, with by-then forgotten funk giants similar to George Clinton discovering themselves sampled on tracks by Public Enemy, EPMD and others. These rap data of the late 80s would revive curiosity in pure funk, giving gamers like Clinton and Collins a turbo-charged profession enhance.
And as of 2025, it’s nonetheless round, if principally as an added flavour in tracks by mainstream artists like Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak. However if you wish to go hardcore, try funk masters similar to Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley or fashionable maestros Vulfpeck.
Important Names
BOOTSY COLLINS
Few musicians are as tethered to funk because the snappily attired bassist Bootsy Collins. Born in 1951, he first got here to prominence as a part of James Brown’s backing band The JB’s, enjoying on a number of the singer’s most celebrated tracks, together with Get Up (I Really feel Like Being A) Intercourse Machine, Tremendous Unhealthy and Talkin’ Loud And Sayin’ Nothing. Collins then joined Funkadelic (alongside together with his brother, Phelps ‘Catfish’ Collins) and forming Bootsy’s Rubber Band in 1976 (their debut album, Stretchin’ Out In Bootsy’s Rubber Band, would attain US No.59). Bootsy shortly grew to become the go-to bassist for artists within the 80s who wished a few of that funk magic, collaborating with Jerry Harrison, Malcolm McClaren and Keith Richards. He’s additionally there on Deee-Lite’s membership basic Groove Is In The Coronary heart, even turning up in its psychedelic video. At 73, he’s nonetheless at it, releasing his newest LP, Album Of The Yr #1 Funkateer, in 2024.
JAMES BROWN
‘The Godfather of Soul’ is probably James Brown’s mostly used sobriquet, however let’s not overlook that he’s often known as ‘The Minister Of New New Tremendous Heavy Funk’. No artist in music historical past did extra to popularise (some might say invent) funk music than Brown, who expanded his imaginative and prescient of American rhythm and blues within the late 60s with loose-limbed tracks similar to Chilly Sweat, Give It Up Or Turnit A Loose, Licking Stick – Licking Stick and, after all, Funky Drummer. Bringing in The JB’s as his backing band within the early 70s introduced with it much more experimentation, with Brown eschewing a lot of his previous R&B sound for a extra dedicated funk id. With out Brown’s many inventions, it’s honest to say that bands similar to Sly & The Household Stone and Parliament would by no means have existed. Godfather of Soul? We’d argue ‘Godfather of Funk’ is a much more becoming epithet.
GEORGE CLINTON
Rivalling Bootsy for sheer on-stage wow-factor, George Clinton introduced his tackle Afrofuturism to the fore within the Seventies, mixing African rhythms with soul and jazz to create the idiosyncratic P-Funk sound. Because the architect behind funk collectives Parliament and Funkadelic, Clinton went on to create a fancy mythology round his music that’s filled with fictional characters and outlandish concepts in addition to themes that explored the African American expertise. The Osmonds they most emphatically weren’t. Now 83, he’s nonetheless going sturdy, even popping up in an version of the US model of TV present The Masked Singer in 2022.
SLY STONE
Because the mastermind behind Sly & The Household Stone, Sylvester Stewart – aka Sly Stone – was one of many pioneers of pop-funk within the early Seventies. As AllMusicstates boldly, “James Brown might have invented funk, however Sly Stone perfected it”, and positively few artists did as properly in spreading the funk sound to the mainstream. Not that Stone ever compromised. Together with his multiracial band, he blended full-throated political messages with dancefloor-friendly grooves. Battling psychological well being points, he’s been disappointingly quiet for many years, although an autobiography co-written with creator Ben Greenman, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), emerged in 2023.
Important Albums
ISAAC HAYES – SHAFT (1971)
He’d made his title as one among Stax’s best soul stars, however with this 1971 LP Isaac Hayes confirmed off his funky facet with a basic soundtrack to one of many defining Blaxploitation flicks. When, in 1972, Theme From Shaft received the Academy Award for Greatest Unique Tune, it marked the arrival of funk into the mainstream. It stays, by the way in which, the best-selling album launched on the Stax label. Rattling proper.
JAMES BROWN – THE PAYBACK (1973)
There are too many titanic James Brown data to say right here, however that is one among his funkiest. The Payback, his thirty seventh LP, was initially deliberate because the soundtrack for the Blaxploitation film Hell Up In Harlem earlier than it was rejected by the movie’s producers. They dropped a clanger there for certain, as this assortment is among the many slinkiest that Brown ever put out.
RICK JAMES – STREET SONGS (1981)
With its two exalted satellites, Give It To Me Child and the much-sampled Tremendous Freak, Rick James’ fifth studio album is his masterpiece. In some methods it was one of the best Prince album that wasn’t a Prince album, and would show essentially the most profitable file commercially for the person dubbed ‘The King of Punk-Funk’. Mentioned the BBC: “What made Avenue Songs so successful was the defiant and passionate performances given by James, along with the progressive and thrilling songwriting.”
LEVEL 42 – WORLD MACHINE (1985)
Of the Brit-funk outfits, no band made a much bigger impression than Degree 42. Mark King’s slap bass grew to become as a lot part of this sub-genre’s sound as Bootsy’s bass guitar work was throughout the Atlantic. This, the band’s sixth album, is one among their finest, boasting funky cuts similar to Dream Loopy and I Sleep On My Coronary heart.
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