George Clinton

George Clinton is one of the revolutionaries of the funk and R&B genre and the man behind both Parliament and Funkadelic. Born in North Carolina but raised in New Jersey, Clinton had a love for doo-wop music and formed his first group, The Parliaments, when he was just a teenager. With the group, Clinton nabbed his first hit as a co-writer and lead vocalist with I Wanna Testify. This would be the first of a string of R&B chart-toppers. 

In the ‘60s, Clinton worked as a songwriter for Motown while also creating music for The Parliaments. The group found success in the ‘70s under the names Parliament and Funkadelic as the two bands combined popular musical elements from other artists including James Brown and Jimi Hendrix, while also developing their own sound using new technologies. This sound is as recognisable to music fans today as it was five decades ago.

Over the next decade, P-Funk released over 40 R&B hit singles including three No.1 tracks and three Platinum albums. 

Clinton worked on solo projects like Computer Games in the early ‘80s which included another No.1 hit for the artist, Atomic Dog. Much of Clinton’s solo work during this period included contributions from P-Funk members. 

Over the next few years, Clinton released three more albums as well as a live album. During this period, he was also asked by the Red Hot Chili Peppers – who were big fans – to produce their album Freaky Styley.

Clinton’s music has been frequently sampled by many other artists, such as Dr. Dre, and he has worked with many more who call themselves fans, including Snoop Dogg, OutKast and Kendrick Lamar. He also continued to tour well into the ‘00s and ‘10s, even joining Mark Ronson, Mary J. Blige and Grandmaster Flash at Glastonbury Festival to perform Ronson’s Uptown Funk. 

In 2018, Clinton announced that he would be retiring from touring in 2019 and indicated to fans that Parliament-Funkadelic would likely continue to tour without him. That same year, The Recording Academy announced that both Clinton and P-Funk would be given the Lifetime Achievement Award.

Despite his previous announcement, Georgie Clinton confirmed he would be going back on tour in May 2022 with a string of dates across the UK.