George Clinton’s Parliament-Funkadelic stopped releasing new albums by 1981 and he started his solo career in 1982. His move into releasing music under his name alone still had a lot of the players from his P-Funk collective. He started with the success of “Atomic Dog” from his 1982 Computer Games album. Shouldn’t-Nuf Bit Fish was Clinton’s sophomore recording. “Quickie” combined the synth-heavy R&B of Computer Games with the kind of rock guitar usually heard on a Funkadelic record. The description of a brief sexual experience was classy, fun and favorable to the dance floor. The funk was just as potent as his earlier music but there was a smoothed out edge to “Quickie” that wasn’t quite as raw as songs like “Flash Light” or “(Not Just) Knee Deep.” Many fans believed that “Quickie” should have been promoted as the second single from the album. Shouldn’t-Nuf Bit Fish was one of Clinton’s well-received solo outings that pushed the P-Funk vision into the next decade. George Clinton released his last solo album in 2008 and Parliament returned after 38 years with Medicaid Fraud Dogg in 2018. [youtube id=”3JbLbkjMXFQ”]

Pedro Bell the illustrator known for designing several Funkadelic album covers has passed at age 69 from cardiac arrest. George Clinton and Bootsy Collins shared the information on social media and noted his contribution to the band. Bell was responsible for creating the album art for the Cosmic Slop, Standing On The Verge Of Getting It On, One Nation Under A Groove albums and many more. Bell’s style was a perfect fit for Clinton’s psychedelic funk-rock band with all the abstract images that still managed to touch the earth with figures of Black people in outer space.  He told the Chicago Sun-Times in 2009 that his work was “psychedelic from a Black perspective” and that his earliest inspiration came from his Baptist-preaching father’s Bible. The teachings from Revelations led to Bell reading science fiction. He reached out Clinton’s record company in the ’70s and offered his services. 

In the ’80s Clinton hired him to design several of his solo albums including Computer Games and R&B Skeletons In The Closet. Bootsy Collins released a statement to Rolling Stone: 

“The wild and bizarre artwork gave our early audience a sense of seeing the visual side of the music and the language. He had a way of translating and communicating what all the weirdness was about, and that you the consumer really wanted to figure it out, because it truly was otherworldly. Every time the two were done together it would create the One. They there would be another satisfied customer! Thanks to our Captain Draw the Clone Stranger of Artistic Gratification to the Nation, Mr. Pedro Bell. The Funk got Stronger. Your service to this world can never be calculated.”

Bell’s health had been deteriorating for the past nine years and he was receiving kidney dialysis three times a week. He eventually lost his vision and was no longer able to create. No fan of Parliament-Funkadelic can think of either band without thinking of Bell’s art. 

Parliament’s Up For The Down Stroke and  Chocolate City albums have been reissued by Urban Legends/UMe on vinyl. The albums were originally released in 1974 and 1975 and they marked the return of Bootsy Collins and the band’s tribute to Washington, D.C. in hopes for a Black president decades before Obama. Urban Legends has collaborated with Feedfeed and on a Chocolate City-inspired recipe video co-hosted by chef Roblé Ali and cookbook author/blogger/artist Jerrelle Guy. They honor the iconic album by sharing some desserts invoked by the album, discussing its influence on current music, themes of the African diaspora and how music elevates the cooking and dining experience. Colleen Vincent of Black Food Folks and The James Beard Foundation will join the conversation and share her perspective growing up in Brooklyn, one of many chocolate cities in America. 

Parliament’s Up For The Down Stroke is available in a limited edition red vinyl while Chocolate City has a limited edition picture disc and both are available in black vinyl.Each album was reissued today on the Urban Legends site. 

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[youtube id=”3rutWVNjSuk”]George Clinton’s T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M linked him back with Bernie Worrell, Maceo Parker, Bootsy Collins, Junie Morrison and Fred Wesley after years of them not working together. The 1996 album was a lot of jamming in the vein of all three of his groups including Funkadelic and the P-Funk All-Stars. The Parliament presence brought up past themes with “Summer Swim” which could have been the sequel to “Aqua Boogie” but without the group’s horn section. 

“If Anybody Gets Funked Up (It’s Gonna Be You)” was another one of Clinton’s collaborations with rappers this time it was MC Breed and Erick Sermon. Clinton wrote the song with Belita Woods and Gary “Mudbone” Cooper both longtime members of his funk clan. The slinky bass-lead track opened the album with Clinton’s seamless mastery of hip-hop and funk. West Coast G-Funk influenced the song’s fat basslines and added to its ability to magnetically pull bodies to the dancefloor.

It wasn’t Clinton’s first time working with MC Breed because he was one of many rappers to participate on the politically-minded “Paint The White House Black” from Hey Man Smell My Finger three years earlier. He had already made the connection between the genres back on The Cinderella Theory in 1989 when he recorded the quirky “Tweakin'” with Chuck D and Flavor Flav. Clinton understood earlier than most artists the importance of working with hip-hop artists from Generation X most who grew up listening to him and started sampling his music for their records. “If Anybody Gets Funked Up (It’s Gonna Be You)” was one part of the charm of T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M. that reignited the band and set off the Mothership Reconnection Tour with Bootsy Collins, Bernie Worrell and the P-Funk All-Stars. The Japanese version of the album contains “Secret Love” co-written by Clinton and his son Trey Lewd. T.A.P.O.A.F.O.M. was considered a comeback for Clinton and it would be his last solo album until How Late Do U Have 2BB4UR Absent? was released on his The C Kunspyruhzy label in 2005 and had appearances from Prince and Jazza Pha. 

Parliament’s Medicaid Fraud Dogg was released in 2018 after a 28-year break. In 2019, George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award and have continued their final tour.