The king of funk was pretty drugged-out (Clinton was used to working in these conditions, as many hits of Parliament-Funkadelic were created while on acid) and entered the studio feeling very anxious and fearing that his career was over. Clinton was not in the studio during the session, so Garry went to pick him up at the Hotel close by. Spradley then created the bassline using both Minimoog and Prophet5 synths.īoth Clinton and Shider wrote the uber-catchy song lyrics. Once they heard it, they immediately felt this sounded very special and unique, so they kept the beat playing on reverse. They played for many hours with a drum machine, recorded 6 minutes of it on tape, and decided to put the tape backward. Then he met a radio DJ named Ted Currier, who believed in Clinton and helped him re-launch his career.Īt the beginning of 1982, together with keyboardist David Lee Spradley and guitarist Garry Shider, they began their first session. Although Clinton was strong and persistent, in late 1981, he was about to give up. He did not score a hit for multiple years to make things worse. The label then closed in 1981 due to a significant financial loss (It briefly resurrected in 1983 for a P-Funk All-Stars album).Ĭlinton at that time got blocklisted by many record labels because he was having a lot of trouble with drug addiction and had some legal disputes about copyrights. They planned to release the successful Roger Troutman's Zapp first album with the label, but it then got sold to Warner Bros, becoming a top-selling album. The label Uncle Jam records founded by Clinton in 1980, went bankrupt. It's a perfect blend of electronic music, represented here by sequenced machines and synthesizers and infectious funky grooves played by humans.īefore telling you the story of how this song was created, we need to go back to 1981: an awful year for the ParliaFunkadelic leader. It also reflects the technological advancement made by humans at that time. This song inspired a generation of hip-hop producers and laid the fundamentals of an entirely new genre called G-Funk! It has the same vibe as many G-Funk classic hits. Below you can hear ‘Atomic Dog’, ‘(Not Just) Knee Deep’ and, of course, 1993 classic ‘Who Am I (What’s My Name?’ by Snoop Dogg.When you hear this song, you immediately think about how funky this is, but you also think about west coast hip-hop. Aside from ‘Atomic Dog’, the track also samples Funkadelic’s ‘(Not Just) Knee Deep’. Released in 1982, ‘Atomic Dog’ was a single for the Parliament-Funkadelic album Computer. Produced by George Clinton alongside Ted Currier, the single was the collective’s last to reach number one on the Billboard R&B Charts.Īlthough the single was not a massive hit upon its release, due to sampling, it has become a culturally significant piece of music that has grown to become a classic within the African-American music community. As the frontman who spearheaded Parliament-Funkadelic, Clinton is lauded as one of the foremost innovators of funk music and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997 alongside other members of Parliament-Funkadelic.Īs one could infer from its name, P-funk fused with hip-hop spawned a new sonic that would go on to become G-funk, and this is where ‘Atomic Dog’ and Snoop Dogg cross paths. A true genius, Clinton made funk music with a sci-fi aesthetic, the outlandishness of glam rock, and the psychedelia of the 1960s then fused it with a bit of electronic music. Throughout the era, Clinton was heavily sampled by Dre, and he was effectively a passive pioneer of the G-funk movement.Ĭlinton is known as the creator and pioneer of what many refer to as P-funk. Produced by Dr Dre as a G-funk record, ‘Who Am I (What’s My Name?)’ contains a sample from George Clinton. This number was the world’s formal introduction to Snoop Dogg as a career artist, and after the single’s release, everybody became familiar with Snoop Doggy Dogg. However, one of the most renowned cuts from the album is ‘Who Am I (What’s My Name?)’. Doggystyle birthed many classic hip-hop tracks, including the iconic ‘Gin and Juice’.
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