Connections make the world go round, and George Clinton learned early-on that linking music and sports would be a winning combination.
Funk artist George Clinton is well known as the leader of the sensational group, Parliament-Funkadelic, which helped put funk into the world of music.
Courtesy: Boise State Public Radio
And to make it big in music, Clinton turned to sports. “They go together,” said Clinton in an interview with The Undefeated. “All the way back to when we first began writing songs, we wrote songs that would work in the gym, in skating rinks, at basketball games.”
Clinton elaborated: “Back in the doo-wop days, we realized that one of the best places to sell music was at the skating rink. You get a song that works good in a skating rink, you realized, ‘Wow, I may have something.’ You stay in the business long enough, you may be able to come up with something like Queen, We will, we will, rock you!”
“‘You know what that does to a stadium. Or [MC] Hammer, [U] Can’t Touch This. You can make a song that is geared for sports. I’ve been knowing that for a while. It’s one of the first things you learn as a songwriter [how to excite the public].”
Because of having his music grounded in sports, Clinton has earned the respect of many superstar athletes, including Shaquille O’Neal, Michael Jordan, Vince Carter, and Malcolm Jenkins.
Clinton has many memories of his music in basketball. He reminisced: “When Magic [Johnson] first came to L.A., Kareem [Abdul-Jabbar] was already there. Magic was playing Knee Deep on his box. Kareem said, ‘Naw, it’s about One Nation around here.’ One Nation Under a Groove was a song that was out about a year before Knee Deep. The stars always have their version of the era that they liked.”
So next time you hear a funk song at a sporting event, remember what George Clinton had to say about the music-sports connection.
