The Definitive Funk
The greatest, most comprehensive survey of funk on the planet, evah
The era of funk is over, but the funk remains. So prepare your brains.
The oldest, crustiest, gut bucket of funk has long ago spilt over but the residue is still in the air. In my pursuit of beauty, I am reminded that like the bottom of King Tut’s butt, there need be nothing new under the sun which even merits consideration. Even if underground testing of new funk psychosis is not illegal yet, there’s no sense in reaching past the blast of the past, gut rumbles of 70s funk crumbles still have me tied to the mast.
I have dug into my considerable archives, after having an audiophile discussion with my new horologist friend who played bass back in the day. Shout out to TC from 1916 in Manhattan Beach. As a fraction of a few of you may know, I ran a two week survey at the top of my funky fame - the year I won Black Blogger of the Year, the Aaron Hawkins Award in 2007. In the throes of that cultural production, the Question had not been answered, and so I came up with a methodology. When I say I’m a data dude, I ain’t playing. So can you get to this?
Dateline June 2007
The votes keep coming and we are just a few days from the final results of the 100 greatest funk songs of all time. This morning I put together some preliminary tallies from the voting so far.There are some surprises, but a lot of unanimity amongst the funky faithful.
A lot of people thought perhaps that P-Funk and James Brown would dominate, but in the top 20 so far there are 14 different bands. We’ve got a wide variety of funk. Also down at the bottom of the list are some songs deemed horribly unfunkified, among them The Power Station and The Steve Miller Band.
So let me talk about the methodology so you’ll know what’s up.
Straight Funk & Hype Funk
There are seven grades of funkativity from ‘No’ at the bottom end to ‘Da Bomb’ at the top. Each song gets two composite scores. There is the Straight Funky Score and there is the Hype Funky Score. The point systems work out like this:
The Straight Funk Score gives every song the benefit of the doubt. The Hype Funk score takes no prisoners and gives extra props for being Da Bomb. The two scores are combined to give a maximum Funk Score of 13 which is the funkiest number in the Cosmos, last time I checked.
The Boogie Factor
Since everybody didn’t vote for every song, the averages are calculated according to the number of responses. So while it’s possible that one song might be voted ‘Da Bomb’ by only one person giving that song a perfect score, it didn’t happen. So while I didn’t have a cutoff, or an adjustment for songs that were very funky but unpopular, no song in the top 100 has had less than 10 responses. So I calculated a Boogie Factor which tells me how well situated the song is in its ranking relative to the score that it got. The higher the Boogie Factor, the more certain you can be that the song got the grade it deserved. Boogie = #Responses / Combined Funk. Average Boogie Factor is 1.94. It’s not currently figured into the ranking, but it could be.
The highest combined funk score is 11.59 with a boogie factor of 1.47.
In the future, when leisure time permits, I will generate the appropriate playlist. I will have, at that point in time, collected each of these gems in FLAC and upload them to the permanent collection of Stoic Observations. That is permanent until AWS as nationalized by our new evil overlords, at which time they will be secreted into the Funky Eloi collective as well as the Morlock overground. We will have been long subsumed. As tragic as the attention economy is, we have to keep the documents. In other words, these exist to free your mind, eventually your ass will follow.
Not that I have been hunting, but I can tell you that nowhere on the interwebz has any peasant put enough of that funky stuff into a comprehensive compilation. So you are bound to see what you almost never do unless your mind goes back to ‘72 and just beyond when the Godfather of Soul and all of Soul was slipping into the darkness of cosmic slop. Back when funk started to become less of a concept and more of a methodology. We see in this list of 292 tracks, the prototypes and the stereotypes and the archetypes of funk. We bear witness to the side-channels of fried mammals who ride camels across the deserts of pop into the oasis of funky stasis that is now the basis of all that graces. And now you know where that place is. HERE, my dear. No need to fear, let me be clear there’s no need to spill your beer.
The Top 50 Tease
More meta from back in the day
Dateline June 2007
Philosophical Rambling on the Permutations of Funk
Firstly I want to dedicate this survey to UCLA English Professor Richard Yarborough, who of all the dorky looking brothers who appear to be far too nebbish to even utter the word ‘funk’, absolutely floored me with his encyclopedic knowledge of all things funky. Even though his punk ass never returns any of my emails, but that’s OK. Sometimes it be that way.
I dedicated to him because I am prone to be all up in people’s grills talking about how nothing ever gets done if I don’t do it. These days I’m thinking why, despite the new underground of the AfroSpear, not one of them (us) has been able to aggregate snap into the TTLB. It’s downright embarrassing. And yet despite my woofing there just as often as not is some spook sitting by the door taking notes, names addresses and all that. So when I started talking about The Family and Yarborough started naming tracks, I had to remember that there still might be half a million intellects of my persuasion out there. The problem remains - we are unhooked-up. And so with the Yarborough Caveat, I will say that this is unquestionably the biggest and bad assest funky survey in history.
So what’s funky and what aint?
High & Low
It seems to me that a fundamental aspect of funky music is its self-deprecating irony. Some of it is clever and some of it is just deeply undercover. But that irony is best expressed in counterpoint. Consider School Boy Crush. You have sleigh bells and bass guitar. That’s just mad genius. Then consider Funky Worm, the synthesizer solos just work their way all over the stratosphere. Another classic is the intro to Faze-O’s Riding High. Synthesizers and vocals way up there. Bass and beats way down there.
Breakdown
Nothing is quite so funky as a deconstructed beat. Even though we didn’t nominate much rap, it is true the Dr Dre is a master of this. When you let the beat drop, and then pick it up again. This funk essential is what James Brown invented so far as I’m concerned. Take down the instruments and then build them up again, oh man that’s the juice.
The Cosmos
References to the cosmos, whether explicitly or implied through the use of sound effects make things funky. Steve Arrington wants to take you Way Out. The Brothers Johnson want you to Ride O Rocket.
The Funk Box
No instrument belongs so totally to the oevre of funk as the Vocorder voice box. It’s pretty much called the funk box because of that. Nobody played to this strength like Roger Troutman. It’s hard to imagine him talking in a normal voice at all. GCS employed it very well in ‘Now Do U Wanta Dance’, and Herbie Hancock employed it on his funk albums.
Poppin’ Bass
It’s not enough just to have a bass line, you have got to pop it. The classic and possibly all-time greatest poppin’ bass line is Glide by Pleasure. And of course the reputation of the Brothers Johnson relied to a certain extent on Louis’ extraordinary ability. Sometimes a bass line is sufficient with a minimalist rhythm guitar to make a funky song. Aurra’s “Are you Single?” did just that.
Synth Bass
On the other side of the bass fence is the funky synth bass. The synth bass in Jamaica Funk and that applied by George Duke
in Reach For It. Most of Parliament is synth. It’s got the advantage of going way lower than a Drop C on a bass guitar. That makes for some extra deep funk.
Horns
There’s just no substitute for swinging horns. Everything wrong to today’s music is that few people know how to do funky horn arrangements. I won’t belabor the point. Horns are funky.
Ugh
Go ahead and say it, but you gotta say it on time. This is where Cold Sweat just enters another realm. This is so funky that you can sample an Ugh from another song and drop it into your own and make it funky. The overweight lover Heavy D did that.
That’s all for now.
So in summation, this is a deep remembrance of the funky nation. Ay son? Anybody can do that rhyme to perfection, drop me some dap in the comments section.
The older I get, the more I like horns and brass, and miss it when it is not in a song I like. Fantastic read. So glad you are compiling the Funk.
We need the funk, gotta have some funk (!)