Right from the very beginning of Parliament’s classic album Mothership Connection, we get a strong sense of just what kind of wild ride we’re about to take. “We have taken over your radio to bring you the special show,” a mysterious voice announces. “We will return it to you as soon as you are groovy.” That sets off the basic concept; an intergalactic radio station is broadcasting either directly from outer space, or with a direct connection to it (we’re never quite clear on that). This is the starting point for one of the most influential and ridiculously entertaining funk albums of all-time.
While pretty much every album George Clinton made with Parliament and Funkadelic in their ’70s heyday is well-regarded, Mothership Connection just might be his masterpiece. When considering this album, it’s interesting to look at Clinton’s inspiration behind it. He stated that he enjoyed using his music as a platform to “put black people in situations nobody ever thought they would be in.” For the band’s previous album, Chocolate City, that place was the White House. This time around, they went even further, taking things into outer space. In a way, it was a form of escapism at the most literal level. Where else could one avoid the harsh realities of being black in America, but by blasting off into another solar system?
But while the political ramifications of this album are certainly important, it would be a disservice to not talk about how purely fun this album is. Throughout its 38-minute running time, we meet colorful DJs like Lollipop Man and Starchild, who joke about “doing it in your ear drum.” There’s also no shortage of killer bass lines, and immediately memorable chants, from “make my funk the P-Funk/ I wants to get funked up” to “give up the funk/ we want the funk” to “give the people what they want/ what they want/ and they wants it all the time.” The album is a riot from start to finish, with nary a dull moment in sight.
Mothership Connection stays true to its outer space concept to the point that it often sounds quite literally like it was recorded in space. The groovy bass lines and riffs often do sound like they are blasted into our ear-drums from light years away, particularly on tracks like “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker),” “Supergroovalisticprosifunkstication (The Bumps Bump)” and “Night of the Thumpasorus Peoples.” This album was released 40 years ago this week, and yet it still sounds like it comes from the future. Was George Clinton actually a space alien, or was he just well ahead of his time? Maybe it’s a little of both.
The influence of this album is long-reaching, and has made its way into several genres. When thinking of all the chants on this album, it’s hard not to picture the Talking Heads classic “Burning Down the House” being inspired by the classics here. We can also hear this album’s funky sound reflected in ’90s G-Funk classics like Dr. Dre’s “Let Me Ride” and Snoop Dogg’s “Who Am I (What’s My Name),” both of which have beats not unlike what you would hear on this album. George Clinton spent most of his career teaching the world how to funk, and more than any other album in his discography, Mothership Connection was the album that several other brilliant artists followed when leaving their own mark.
Four decades after its release, this album feels as vital as ever. With Star Wars: The Force Awakens opening this week, and featuring black stormtroopers, as well as a prominent role for Lupita Nyong’o, it’s interesting to think about this album as being an important landmark for black science-fiction. As Clinton pointed out, outer space wasn’t a place where you saw black people very often 40 years ago (Nichelle Nichols’ Uhura on Star Trek being the exception), and even now, people of color are still fighting for visibility within the genre. Taking that into consideration, Mothership Connection feels like a pioneering album, reminding the world that dreams of outer space travel was something that transcended race.
You can appreciate Mothership Connection for its political importance, or you can simply appreciate it as a ridiculously fun funk album. Either way, it’s a stone cold classic, and an album that has undeniably stood the test of time. Forty years later, with all kinds of new technologies that were unthinkable when this album was released, nothing feels more out of this world than tuning into WEFUNK and grooving along with the mothership connection.
