The album that always reminds Black Thought of the creative 1970s: “Descended down from the mothership”
Some would write off Black Thought as a conscious rapper who grew up inspired only by politically charged black music. However, nothing could be further from the truth. The Philadelphia native grew up with an eclectic array of music around him and listened to a lot more than militant hip-hop.
As an adolescent growing up in Philadelphia during the late 1970s and early ’80s, the Things Fall Apart lyricist was exposed to a range of New York acts, including Whodini and Big Daddy Kane. However, he was also enthralled by figures like Schoolly D, who were rising out of the Phiadelphia, his hometown.
Before hip-hop’s inception in the 1970s, the Pennsylvania city cultivated its own music scene and developed its own soul music subgenre. Often referred to as ‘Philly soul’, the style was characterised by its obvious funk influences fused with lush instrumental arrangements, such as orchestral strings and horn sections. It’s a mark of extra skill and arrangement that sets the city’s sound on its path.
However, another genre that was getting huge amounts of traction across the US was funk, especially in black communities. That said, during the 1970s, one peculiar figure began to come to the forefront of the genre and capture the charts with his unique sound.
During the 1970s, P-Funk, a subgenre developed by the band Parliament-Funkadelic, began to soar, and it was pioneered almost solely by George Clinton. A talented session instrumentalist, the legendary George Clinton was initially a member of two bands—Parliament, formed in the 1960s in New Jersey and another collective named Funkadelic.
The latter outfit made funk music with a sci-fi aesthetic, the outlandishness of glam rock, and the psychedelia of the 1960s, then fused it with a splash of electronic music. This captured the imagination of many adolescents, including Black Thought, who, to this day, is in love with the band’s 1978 studio album, One Nation Under a Groove.
Speaking with Pitchfork about the P-Funk pioneer, the Philly rapper explained, “I remember a certain level of creative freedom in the atmosphere in the late ’70s. It was infectious. And it was traceable back to a few artists, one of whom was George Clinton and all the different configurations of his collectives.”
Black Thought then spoke about Funkadelic’s album, detailing, “When I think of One Nation Under a Groove, I’m immediately taken back to sliding across the backseat of a big body vehicle, one of those gas guzzlers like a Nova, back in the day before seatbelts was a thing. That was the soundtrack. It transports me to the safe space of community I had as a young person.”
One little-known gem Black Thought shared with Pitchfork is that The Roots even toured with Clinton in the 1980s. Recalling the experience, the emcee concluded, “When I think about the energy George Clinton represents, it’s liberty—in the studio and definitely onstage. When the Roots were still emerging, we toured with his band extensively, and getting to see those guys for the first time was otherworldly. It definitely felt as though they’d descended down from the mothership.”