George Clinton

The musical constellation of North Carolina-born singer and producer George Clinton shoots off in all directions: He's the bridge between soul and rock, psychedelia and disco, funk and hip-hop, planet Earth and outer space. As the ringleader of Funkadelic, he retrofitted James Brown grooves for the post-Hendrix age. And his concurrent outfit, Parliament, issued bass-slapping dance-floor directives that doubled as rallying cries for an Afrofuturist ideology embedded in everything from early Detroit techno to Outkast to Black Panther. Listen to “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker)” or “One Nation Under a Groove” for a taste of how both bands oozed politics, celebration, and revolution. In the ’70s, Parliament-Funkadelic spread their black-liberation gospel through a sci-fi-inspired stage spectacle whose riotous atmosphere and sensory-overloading excess rivaled that of any arena-rock act of the era. But while the P-Funk mothership was decommissioned by the early ’80s, the crew’s signature low-rider bounce—along with the electro-tweaked sonics of Clinton’s rambunctious 1982 solo LP, Computer Games—formed the foundation of countless ’90s West Coast rap hits. And throughout it all, Clinton remains the patron saint to several generations of funky iconoclasts, whether he's mentoring a young Red Hot Chili Peppers or dropping his trademark cosmic jive on Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly.