George Clinton

George Clinton's musical story began in a barbershop. Born in Kannapolis, North Carolina, on July 22, 1941, he grew up in Plainfield, New Jersey, and in 1955, as a teenager, he formed the doo-wop group the Parliaments, rehearsing in the back room of a shop where he straightened hair. That doo-wop foundation remained audible decades later in a body of music that drew together soul and psychedelic rock, used prominent bass lines and treated arrangement and performance as open experiments. Recording as both Parliament and Funkadelic, his bands helped move soul music into funk during the 1970s.

Parliament's December 1975 album Mothership Connection, released on Casablanca Records, imagined funk musicians as visitors from another galaxy, and Clinton carried the concept into his live shows, landing onstage in a spaceship. The record gave the collective's music a theatrical frame to match its sound and became one of the era's defining funk albums.

Funkadelic's September 1978 album One Nation Under a Groove, released on Warner Bros., became one of the collective's defining records. The surrounding family of musicians was large and essential: Bernie Worrell's keyboards, Bootsy Collins's bass, Eddie Hazel's guitar and Garry Shider's vocals all belong to the P-Funk sound, and the project was a collective achievement from the start.

That sound became part of a wider musical conversation. BMI identifies Clinton's work as an influence on later rap and rock, including music by OutKast, Snoop Dogg, Public Enemy and Busta Rhymes built on P-Funk recordings. Dr. Dre built much of his G-funk sound on samples of Clinton's recordings, carrying the collective's grooves into 1990s hip-hop. In 1997, Parliament-Funkadelic entered the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, with the induction recognizing the many musicians behind the group's records and performances.