Rising from R&B with whispers of jazz and soul, funk got here of age within the Nineteen Seventies, the place a succession of artists from James Brown to Sly & The Household Stone and Parliament would carry these easy syncopated basslines and regular, irresistible drum grooves into document 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 rather more freeform, permitting its musicians house 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 option to British shores, with Common White Band and Hello-Rigidity replicating these roomy rhythms.
It was finally assimilated into pop, with artists comparable to Stage 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 comparable to George Clinton discovering themselves sampled on tracks by Public Enemy, EPMD and others. These rap information 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, take a look at funk masters comparable to Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley or trendy 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 few of the singer’s most celebrated tracks, together with Get Up (I Really feel Like Being A) Intercourse Machine, Tremendous Dangerous 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 rapidly turned the go-to bassist for artists within the 80s who needed 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 12 months #1 Funkateer, in 2024.
JAMES BROWN
‘The Godfather of Soul’ is maybe James Brown’s mostly used sobriquet, however let’s not neglect that he’s also called ‘The Minister Of New New Tremendous Heavy Funk’. No artist in music historical past did extra to popularise (some could 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 comparable 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 comparable 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 Nineteen 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 robust, 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 Nineteen Seventies. As AllMusicstates boldly, “James Brown could have invented funk, however Sly Stone perfected it”, and definitely few artists did as effectively in spreading the funk sound to the mainstream. Not that Stone ever compromised. Along with his multiracial band, he combined 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 writer Ben Greenman, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), emerged in 2023.
Important Albums
ISAAC HAYES – SHAFT (1971)
He’d made his title as certainly one of Stax’s best soul stars, however with this 1971 LP Isaac Hayes confirmed off his funky aspect with a basic soundtrack to one of many defining Blaxploitation flicks. When, in 1972, Theme From Shaft received the Academy Award for Greatest Unique Track, it marked the arrival of funk into the mainstream. It stays, by the best way, the best-selling album launched on the Stax label. Rattling proper.
JAMES BROWN – THE PAYBACK (1973)
There are too many titanic James Brown information to say right here, however that is certainly one of 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 probably the most profitable document commercially for the person dubbed ‘The King of Punk-Funk’. Stated the BBC: “What made Avenue Songs so successful was the defiant and passionate performances given by James, along with the modern and thrilling songwriting.”
LEVEL 42 – WORLD MACHINE (1985)
Of the Brit-funk outfits, no band made an even bigger impression than Stage 42. Mark King’s slap bass turned 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 certainly one of their finest, boasting funky cuts comparable to Dream Loopy and I Sleep On My Coronary heart.
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