George Clinton, one of the pioneers of Funk music along with James Brown and Sly Stone, recently sat down with XXL and talked about his collaborations with some of hip-hop’s biggest artist through the years. Throughout the 90s, George Clinton could be heard in hip-hop from the Digital Underground to Eric B. & Rakim. George Clinton was also one of the biggest influences in Dr. Dre’s production career as some of his biggest hits were samples of Parliament and Funkadelic.
“If you see people dancing, funk is alive,” he says. “I don’t care if you callin‘ it disco, funk, hip-hop, bebop, rock—if they dancin‘ and they shakin‘ their butt, it’s alive.”
In the interview with XXL, Clinton talked about working with music legends like 2Pac, Too $hort, Ice Cube, and Outkast.
When he was asked about Outkast, he replied “I knew them with Dallas Austin before they were Outkast, before there was Goodie Mob, before it was Organized Noize; they were all one big group, Dungeon Family.” His last work with the Outkast was Big Boi’s “Fo Yo Sorrows” on Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son Of Chico Dusty. The only release song from Outkast and George Clinton was “Synthesizer” on the 1998 album Aquemini.
He also commented on his collaborations with Outkast throughout the 90s stating “I’ve done so many things with them, if they put out some of the stuff I did with them… I did a gang of stuff with them. Unreleased, yeah. We just had tracks and we would just go over the tracks, just brilliant bullshit. [Laughs] That would have been starting in ’95, ’94, all right up until ’99.”
Check out the full interview with XXL here.
