One Song - Parliament's "Mothership Connection"

Episode Date: June 5, 2025

This June on One Song, Diallo and LUXXURY are celebrating Black Music Month. They're kicking it off with Parliament’s 1975 funk classic “Mothership Connection.” In this episode, they delve into Parliament's innovative theatrics, the song's Afro-futurist narrative, and why George Clinton is the crazy cool grand-unc of hip-hop. Say goodbye to sticky notes and calendar confusion with Skylight. Go to SkylightCal.com/OneSong for $30 off your 15 inch Calendar. Songs Discussed: "Mothership Connection (Star Child)" - Parliament "Let Me Ride" - Dr. Dre "Bring The Noise" - Public Enemy "99 Problems" - Ice T feat. Brother Marquis "Cosmic Slop" - Funkadelic "Up For The Down Stroke" - Parliament "The Payback" - James Brown "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag (1975)" - James Brown "Juicy Fruit" - Mtume "Flash Light" - Parliament "P-Funk (Wants To Get Funked Up)" - Parliament "Doing It To Death" - The J.B.'s "Let Me Ride" - Dr. Dre "Regulate" - Warren G & Nate Dogg "Me Myself and I" - De La Soul "(Not Just) Knee Deep" - Funkadelic "Hay" - Crucial Conflict "I'll Stay" - Funkadelic "I Know You Got Soul" - Eric B. & Rakim "I Know You'll Like It Too" - Funkadelic "Redbone" - Childish Gambino "Wesley's Theory" - Kendrick Lamar "Burning Down The House" - Flying Lotus "Hyena" - Travis Scott "Bonin' In The Boneyard" - Fishbone "Girl Like Me" - PinkPantheress Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, we're talking about a group and a band leader and a song that are really like no other. In the 1970s, they put funk on a completely different stratosphere with their LSD-fueled theatrics and Afrofutris storytelling. And with today's song, they brought spaced out synths, hypnotic grooves, and a mix of sci-fi proto-rap and gospel-infused duop harmonies to the top of the charts in 1976. That's right. Today, we're going to ask the question, did this song lay the groundwork for almost three solid decades for the genre? we know it's hip hop. So put a glide in your stride

and a dip in your hip and come on up to the mothership. We're talking one song and that song is Mothership Connection by Parliament. I'm actor-writer-director and sometimes DJ Diyah Liddell.

And I'm producer DJ songwriter and musicologist luxury aka the guy who whispers Interpolation. And if you want to watch one song you can watch this full episode on YouTube and Spotify. And while you're there,

please like and subscribe. And since June is black music month, we're going to be celebrating black artists all month here on one song. And I couldn't think of a better song than today's to kick us off. Look, for all the dip in the hip stuff going on with this song, there's a crick in my neck for like a weak solid of listening to nothing but P-Funk in Parliament because it is, you cannot listen without doing this. And the songs are long.

So you're doing this for a long time. We were all doing it in the room. So crick in your neck, add that to the list. I will make sure that that goes on the permanent list. I appreciate that. All right, so Diallo, when was the first time you heard in Mothership Connection? Oh, man. You know, honestly,

I'm going to admit something and there's me being vulnerable. I think the first time I heard it was after I heard Dr. Dre's chronic let me ride. Creeping, got the back street on D's. I got my Glock cop because niggas won't tease. No sooner as I said it, seems I got sweaty by some

I wasn't an idiot. I knew that hip hop was sampling all these songs. And I probably heard like Atomic Dog and some of the other songs. This was not one of those songs that I knew. Yeah. And my friend Joe got... You didn't know the originally mean? Yeah.

Like there was some... Because you tell it was something older, though? Like that was being reinterpreted. Of course. Yeah. I could probably tell us, but it was when my friend Joe bought the best of Parliament Funkadelic CD. And I heard the original. I was like, oh, man.

You know, Drain didn't change that much. Like, basically the entire musical bed of the song. It wasn't like how, you know, DJ Premier and Pete Rock necessarily same. The East Coast always chopped it up quite a bit. Like, Drey kind of just took the musical bed of the song and, you know, actually kept like what sounded like the same singers, even though I'm sure we'll find out it was an interpolation. But it was just interesting to hear how similar the two songs were.

Right. That is what you were hearing. You were hearing songs interpolated, but also the same instruments were used in the replay. There is a blueprint that was used not just for that song, but The Chronic in general. To quote him, he says, the whole mothership album was on the chronic, quote, He took the whole album and just rapped over it. So that connection makes total sense. And I think it's a reason why a new generation has a connection to this early music. Look, there's no way that me and Joe would have been riding around Atlanta listening to the best of parliament and fungadelic at that particular time in our lives had it not been for the fact that George had cleared these samples or somebody cleared these samples.

But that is a big part of the story and a big part of what the song, the groundwork for what we're laying is the connection between P-Funk into G-Funk and into modern hip-hop. Absolutely. What about you, luxury? What was the first time you heard this song? We're going to get into P-Funk, meaning Parliament and Funkadelic, meaning George Clinton's musical empire. But it's two bands that are really one group of musicians. And I heard the other group. I heard Funkadelic. When I was a, I was the music director, I think I mentioned this on the Metallic episode, at my college radio station, Georgetown, WGTV. You know, there was a record in there that jumped out to me. It was Funkadelics, 1975. Let's take it to the stage. because the artwork was so cool. It's a psychedelic drawing by Pedro Bell,

who did all the Funkadel covers. And I heard this song, and it just blew my mind. This is get off your ass and jam. You might recognize the solo that begins it, and we'll talk about that in a moment. So the song starts with this iconic sound, that iconic beat. A couple quick things. One, is that the Public Enemy sample at the very beginning?

So that is sampled very famously and Bring the Noise by Public Enemy, 1987. How low can you go? Death roll What a brother No once again That gives the incredible rhyme animal So that entire thing

The guitar solo and the god Those are both from the Funkadelic By the way I feel like If he didn't sample that That is absolutely the sound That Prince was chasing In his later career

Like that sort of like Right Yeah Because guitar solos And hip hop and funk And Prince would really funk After sort of hip hop Sort of guiding the culture forward

So there's one of my favorite stories in all of music We tell stories all the time. We've got 90 episodes of this show. We're just telling stories. We're just telling stories. That guitar solo, what you hear at the beginning of the track, and by the way, goes through the whole track,

he's soloing the whole time. And in the public enemy sample, by the way, it's also in an NWA sample. Yeah, yeah. It's also in Ice T's original 99 problems. They love me back. That's why they stay with me. So if you're having girl problems, I'll prepare for your son. Got 99 problems and a bitch ain't one.

Hit it. The funny thing is, is that it's a total mystery who's playing. In George Clinton's words, the story of how that happened is that, quote, a white kid wandered into the studio. He was a smack addict, and he wanted to know if he could play and pick up some cash. So we started the track.

He just started to play like he was possessed. Even when the song ended, he was still playing. We'd agreed on 25 bucks, but I gave him 50. But he tried to find the guy to put him on more music, and he couldn't find him. The guy just came in, did the solo, and disappeared from life. So, like, we don't really know who did it. Now, many years later, this guy called Paul Warren claimed it was him in an interview in 2009.

Might have been him, but maybe not. So I love the fact that we just have no idea who did this iconic solo, which is the part that sampled on all these other songs. Okay, well, you know, since you mentioned Fungadelic, I think we should take a moment right here at the beginning to tease out. What is the difference between Parliament and Funga Del? Because even I was confused coming into this episode. I've always heard these two, you know, names thrown out. Obviously, I thought they were kind of the same group, but they were. clearly had two different names.

So to be clear, there are two bands led by George Clinton with overlapping members, and they tour as one big collective band called Parliament Funkadelic. Right, or P-Funk. Or P-Funk. Yeah, that's where the term P-Funk actually comes from. George Clinton comes from New Jersey, Plainfield. He starts as a barbershop, like literally a hairstylist. Do-Wop.

They're doing barbershop and do-wap, but literally in the barbershop with him as the barber, which I love. So the original five members of the band are called the Parliaments. Right. They struggle for a little bit. they get a hit around 1967, but then they have a dispute with their record label, Revellit, over the name. So what they do is when they were touring, they had these musicians, and they called them

Funkadelic. And when they had this dispute over the name, they just kind of swapped and said, well, we're called Funkadelic now. And that kind of allowed them to escape from this clause. I love how analog that is. It's like, you have issues with your record label, just change the name of the group and take those same people elsewhere. It's a solution.

It doesn't happen so much nowadays. So how does the name Parliament come back into the fold? So at this point, around 1970, they relaunched Parliament as a new band, but they took off the S. And drop the the the. I don't know why they got away with it, but they did. Like, that was enough to be distinctive. It's just like if John and Paul had some issues, so they came back as Beetle. Yeah.

And to be. Different band guys. Hey, totally different band. Same four guys. Same four guys. Beetle. Not even wearing masks or anything tricky. It's just like, take off the ass.

Very simple. But here's one of the reasons why I love you, my man, because. until this week, I didn't realize that there are some real sonic differences between Parliament and Funkadelic. So, to be clear, Funkadelic had more rock influences. It was guitar heavy and had anything sort of goes production style. Totally. While Parliament was more straight funk, horn heavy, and had a more smooth, you could almost say commercial style. Absolutely, yeah.

And so in George's own words, quote, Parliament was the glitter, the commercial, and Funkadelic was the loose, the harsh. Yeah. And he said there was kind of, they had some sort of rules. that they sometimes broke, like, quote, no psychedelic guitars for Parliament, no horns for Funkadelic. Oh, interesting. So there are, you know, Parliament is kind of cleaner.

It is definitely strictly funk. You have more long funk jams. Yeah. And Funkadelic, from what I'm going to next. That's his place base. That's where he's like, hey, I'm going to do some weird crazy stuff influenced by some of these, you know, rock guys. Right. So an important part of the story is that they made the move from New Jersey to Detroit in the late 60s,

and they start playing with some of these legends. They're on stage with the MC5. with Iggy and the Stooges. They're friends with, like, they're seeing Alice Cooper. They're seeing Ted Nugent. All of these bands are playing together and influencing each other. So there's kind of this sort of gospel and duop and funk and R&B that the parliaments and funkadelic are bringing to the stage.

And then they watch Ted Nugent shred and Alice Cooper, you know, with his costumes and crazy stage show. And all of these things are in the mix. Yeah. What becomes Parliament and Funkadelic. And the drugs. And the drugs are absolutely there. And the drugs definitely influence the music.

You know, I think it would be helpful to hear some. some examples. So here's an example of them being very experimental and psychedelic. Here's a little bit of cosmic slop by Funkadelic from 1973. For those of you listening to audio only, we just showed a clip of the band in a park in front of an amphitheater stage. And let me just say that you might want to pull the car over before you take a look at the visual. It's quite shocking. Yeah. It's like stills from, it's like Godspell, like the sort of hippie clown circus. Yeah, I mean like the makeup and masks.

And there's a diaper. Right. Diper guy. That's literally his nickname was diaper guy. Diper guy. Yeah. Diper guy is so iconic. He's so iconic.

You can't do. Well, we just Sherman showcase and we did a group that was supposed to be like parliament. It was called dazzling Dalbert. Yeah. Diper man. Yeah, we had a group of guys who look like that. We definitely had one guy on stage in a diaper. Yeah.

That's Gary Scheider, who plays into this song that we're talking about today. An example of him overlapping. Sometimes they want to let their freak flag hang fly with rock and guitars and riffs. And sometimes it's a strict groove. So that's the two sides of P-Funk right there. And just for comparison sake, here's a parliament track, not a Funkadel track, a parliament track from the same era, 1974 is up for the downstroke. Get up. Everybody get up.

Get up on the downstroke. Everybody get up. The crick in my neck is only going to get worse as this hour goes by. It's so crazy. So fungadelic, I feel like I'm hanging out with Sly and the Family Stone. I feel like I'm hanging out with like my favorite rock group. When you hear up for the downstroke, you feel like you're like playing, you know, backgammon with Sidney Poitier in a basement party.

Like it feels a lot more Afro-friendly. Okay. You know, it is remarkable that they had. Yeah. And it might even speak to what we've referred to the past as the balkanization of music and radio programming at the time. that they essentially had a funk group that sounds extremely black for the lack of a better term. And then Funkadel, which is like their experimental group for like when they're hanging out

with their white friends, of which they have many. Yeah, and apparently their working process, according to Bernie Whirl, who will be talking out one of our unsung heroes, is that they would record nonstop. They would be in the studio for hours on and they'd wear out their engineers, jamming, kind of coming up with ideas. And then George would sort of like assess what the material was and make a determination which camp it would go into. Does this feel more like a parliament thing? Does it feel like it belongs to the story I'm trying to tell with Funkadelic? Yeah. So the material's all done by the same people in the same

places. And it's just kind of the finishing touches and maybe the vocals were the last step that would determine which entity is like Damon Alburn saying like, is this a Blur's song or a guerrilla's song? I'm not sure. Exactly right. And by the way, the empire doesn't just include Funkadelic in parliament. P-Funk includes Bootsie had his own band. Another unsung, Unsung hero, bass player, Bootsie Collins. Bootsie's rubber band, another incredible band that was incredibly successful. There's the Brides of Funkinstein, the P-Funk All-Stars, Parlet, Horny Horns,

Eddie Hazel and Bernie Whirl all had solo projects. There's about eight or nine different entities under the umbrella. But they all toured together. Mothership connection is where it all comes together. Dude, I'm learning so much. So basically we're saying that Bootsie Collins and Bernie World Whirl are like

basically George Clinton's closest collaborators. Yeah, at this time, that's the brain trust. The three of them are at the core of the songwriting process, including for today's song. I love that. talk about Boise Collins for a moment. Before Parliament and Funkadelic, Boosey Collins was in James Brown's band.

He joined James Brown's band when he's only 17. I can't imagine my teenagers just on tour with James Brown. Maybe I'm too good a father. Maybe I should just let them loose. And funnily enough, he gets kicked out of James Brown's group just 11 months after he joins. There are so many funny stories during this period. One of my favorite is that during his brief time with the band,

he actually got James to trip out accidentally on L. Here's a clip from Mike Judge's awesome animated show about music. Tales from the Tour Bus. What we would do was we would crush up two or three orange sunshine and put it in whatever we're drinking, and we would pass them around, you know. Orange Sunshine was the name of maybe the most popular version of LSD known to man. James Brown comes over to join us, and he says, hit me. And it's like, no, I said,

You don't want him. And he's like, give it, give it. So I'm saying to myself, do I give it to him? Yeah, give it to him. So he starts just going at it. And even after that insane moment, it's actually, like I said, 11 months after he joins the group, that James is like, I don't like you're playing

when you're on LSD or even when you're not on LSD. I don't love your playing. You're out of the group. That's crazy, man. But when he gets kicked out, he still takes with him a treasure, a treasure that James Brown gives him, which is this concept known as the one. We've talked about the one on other episodes.

But for those who haven't listened to every episode, shame on you. Tell us about the one. The one is simply the concept that the downbeat is the one that gets the most accent. In any measure, the first beat of the bar, as long as you're literally playing a note on that bar, the bass in particular, you're going to be setting up the groove. And from there, almost anything goes. In other words, Bootsie's an incredible bass player and he puts a lot of content. He's playing melodies.

He's playing cool fills. he's playing runs. James's point was it's a little busy, which you can do as long as you hit that root on the downbeat. The rest of it is up to you. Which actually goes so against what reggae does. Isn't it insane how opposite funk and reggae are?

Exactly right. But rather than have me explain it, let's hear Bootsie himself saying. You know, one. And then you would try to fit your different notes what you felt in between that like you know, and that's the phone. Super interesting to me about Bootsie leaving James Brown to George Clinton and bringing with him that treasure of this concept of the one is that it's also like kind of exactly at the moment, maybe not coincidentally, where James Brown is a little bit, he's kind of peaking. We have big payback.

In 74, maybe his last good record. He said more than a decade on top. Payback is a little bit the peak. Payback is great. Payback is peak. He's been on top of these are his last kind of good records because after his 39th record in 1974. By 75, he's kind of doing, the records aren't as good. It's kind of bad disco.

He's redoing old songs, but they're not as good. It's like, Papa's got a new brand new back. Papa got a new brand new bag. Literally. I love it with an artist. It's like, take any artist. It's like a David Boy that does less dance again. Yeah, that's exactly what it is.

It's, look, we're freaking huge James Brown fans. That will be another episode, maybe a double someday. So that's this moment, and he goes to Clinton who is on the upswing. for the downstroke we just mentioned. And Chocolate City and Mothership Connection, which are the next ones, and the Funkadelic record, let's take it to the stage. That's 1975. That's the beginning of a five, six-year run

where he can do no wrong. Well, he does a few wrong. Let me take that back. There are some misses in the catalog, but for the most part, I mean, I'm a huge fan of this man, and that 1970s run is insane. There's hit after hit after hit. So we've talked about Bootsie,

and now we've got to talk about keyboard player Bernie Worell because, I mean, like, we could literally do a whole episode, I think you'd agree, on just Bernie alone. He was a classically trained music prodigy. And after working with P-Fung, he goes on to work with some of our absolute favorites. He works for talking heads

when they're in there, stop making sense of phase. He also did the keyboards on M. Tume's classic, juicy fruit. A lot of y'all know that is, V.I.G.'s juicy. But yeah, juicy fruit, absolute classic. And Bernie's just, he's an amazing collaborator when it comes to his time with George Clinton. I mean, one of our absolute favorite parliament songs,

In fact, one of the most sampled songs in hip-hop history is the song that Bernie writes with George and Bootsie Flashlight. You hear the keyboards. Guys and girls dancing. Oh, my God. And who's through that? Who's that? Oh, my God.

That is Bernie Or L on the bass. It's not Bootsie on the bass. It's not Bootsie on the bass. He's playing the keyboards and the bass on this one. The bass is the keyboard. The bass is that Moog. So Bernie is not just like one of the main songwers. of the trio of George, Bernie, and Bootsie.

He's also the band leader. He is the one that brings this musicality, literally knowing a lot of times translating what notes, what chords. Listen. For some of the other musicians, actually play, and arrangement ideas.

That comes from him a lot of the time. You and I have worked on music. I never play the drums on anything that we've worked on. In fact, I have so much love for George Clinton. I did not know this. He doesn't play. George does not play any instruments.

He's a leader of two bands, two great. legacy, you know, like rock and roll Hall of Fame level bands. Absolutely. And he doesn't play an instrument. He can communicate his musicality verbally. He also sings.

So he has a barbershop course background, dual out background. Yeah. So he knows the melodies. He knows the notes. He's filled with ideas. And he has these great collaborators around him who can turn them into what gets recorded.

Listen, George Clinton embodies the creative spirit and vision of Parliament of Funkadelic. And as you can see, this really comes through on the album, Mothership Connection. I mean, like, Clinton wanted to create a concept album, like all his favorite, you know, big rock bands like The Who and Pink Floyd, because they were doing these kind of things at the time.

Except, here's the difference. George wanted to funk it up, so to speak. He envisioned the first ever funk opera that imagined black folks as intergalactic beings in space. Clinton, by the way, huge trekkie. Let's listen to the opening track of Mothership Connection. P-Funk wants to get funked up. Listen, I know there are cameras in this room and they're picking up what I'm doing. And that's on me, but I can't help it.

I cannot help it. This is one of my favorite all-time artists across everything and the crick in the neck. It's worth it. It's worth it. Love that song so much. Totally. And another thing this album illustrates is that P-Funk wasn't just a band, but a multifaceted production and performance entity. Yeah, that's true.

And in fact, I would actually, because they're on Castle Blanca, which is the same as, like, kisses. And so you've got all these, like, bands that are known for, like, their theatrical. Oh, village people, the kids, right? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. If Parliament has, like, the guy in the diaper, village people has, like, the guy dressed like a Native America.

Like, clearly there was a lot in the sauce at Costa Blanca Records. But there's also footage of George Clinton wearing the same headdress earlier. So, like, they're all looking at each other. Totally. There's actually a pretty famous picture of George wearing what are clearly kiss boots in a promo. Yeah. So, like, they were clearly... Shopping at the same vendors. Right.

Oh, just to be a fly on the wall. Or the camel, the gigantic liquor camel that was apparently in the law. lobby of Casablanca records. If I had a time machine, I just want to visit the Sunset Boulevard offices of Casablanca. In 1975, right? Because Kiss is performing so big. And the village people, and... Donna Summer's there.

There's a quote in this book about Cozoblacker Records by Larry Harris called And Party Every Day. It's a great quote because you got to remember, Parliament's signed with Casablanca Records in 1973. By the time 1976 rolls around and George has all these elaborate ideas about a concept album and a stage

production show, which is insane, we find out this. This is the quote. Quote, Parliament's concerts were out of this world, even without the expensive mothership production. About halfway through the set, during Mothership Connection, guitarist Glenn Goins would repeatedly sing the line, I think I see the mothership coming. I think I see the mothership coming. The other band members would point toward the back of the house just as pyro ignited. Then the silver mothership would begin flying over the arena floor above the lighting. And then at that point, George Clinton would descend, walking with a cane and like with this pimp stride, a gliding stride, you might.

And they would sing their song, here's a 1976 clip from that tour where you can see the mothership landing and Clinton emerging. Let's take a look. Oh my God. If you were like smoked out, like this would be insane. It's got disco balls on the sides. Look at them. They're going nuts.

Why wouldn't you? This is like daft punk level. And by the way, same shape, same object. Yeah. it still worked. This is the pyramid. This is the pyramid. This is so good.

What we wouldn't give to be on since then. Witnessing that. It must have been insane. That isn't normal to like see productions like that in that era. Not nowadays. Not even now. Unless you go to Coichella. I mean, by the way, as you can see in this clip,

I can't help but think of just Afrofuturism. I mean, like to put it simply, for those who aren't aware, Afrofuturism is a way of reimagining the future or even the distant past, in a galaxy far, far away, through a black cultural lens. This can be said for the music of SunRaw, the writing of Octavia Butler, as well as Marvel's Black Panther series.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's really worth pointing out how much thought went into these productions and the concepts. George Clinton has a whole George Lucas-esque backstory for the entirety of his output. It's all extremely thought through. He really is a Trekkie. He also talks a lot about this book called Chariots of the Gods. We'll be talking about chariots later on.

The Chariots are coming up. which is by Eric von Danken, which is Afro-Futurism, another outro-futurism, Tome. And it's got some logic to it, and there's a canon to it. It emerges over time as a fan, and maybe not all the mysteries are unraveled. But we just saw, for example, Sir knows devoid of Funk, who's the bad guy. And there's Dr. Funkenstein, who's the good guy. This all sort of plays out on stage and through the albums, this storytelling, this Afro-Futuristic storytelling. To hear Clinton tell it, funk was brought to Earth by aliens aboard UFOs, and it was stored.

inside the Great Egyptian Pyramids. So between what George Clinton is doing and what Maurice White is doing over with Earth, Wind and Fire, there's just a lot of Afro-Futurism, black pride, black, you know, pro-black, you know, stuff in the music. It's really important to point out, this is before Star Wars. Yes, there's Star Trek.

But the whole outer space sci-fi thing is a global phenomenon of, like with box office receipts in the billions, hadn't happened yet. Star Wars is two years after mothership connection. But at that time, we did not know that James Earl Jones would be the voice of Darth Vader.

So we got in there a little bit. We got in Star Wars a little bit. All right, we're going to take a break. But when we come back, we're going to take a trip on the mothership. We're going to hear how this song lays the groundwork for hip-hop. And we'll tell you what song George was probably interpolating with this song. Stay tuned. If your brain is already at full capacity with to-dos and errands, birthdays,

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Yeah, so George Clinton talks about how the origin of this song is that he came up with the me and the boys line. It just popped in his head. We don't know more about where it came from. But we do know that he hummed it, what would become the instrumental hook. He hummed it to his collaborators, to Bernie Orrell and to Bootsie Collins. The three of them together came up with the song. Well, it just here in George's own words. One of the few times where I had to actually get in there and hum it to the musicians.

And basically, you can see that that is the basic groove. throughout the whole song, all the coloring around it is from the artsy-fartsy minds that work with me. Sure. And it's one of the simplest songs that we've done. I looked at the tracks just now. Wouldn't that many needles moving on that one? You know, it was really a neat one. No, I love that idea.

Like, he gave it to the, he gave it to Bernie for the artsy-fartsy stuff, meaning, another quote, where he says, Bernie, put his classical stuff around it. So George has melodies, he has ideas, he has lyrics, he has huge concepts from other ships and Afro-Futurist decades of storytelling. Reading and learning and taking stuff in. And armed with his collaborators, Bernie and Bootsie in particular,

they're able to flesh that out and to take a melody and turn into a chord, for example, and then sort of flesh out how the song gets arranged as well. Because in this song, what's interesting, we were just talking about this,

is that it's one long groove, but then there's this B section, which is a completely new idea. We sort of take it for granted because we know the song, but it comes kind of from out of nowhere. It's sort of a different song then we go back to the groove.

Then we have, it's like the A section, a little bit of a B, then the A again, then a little bit of a B, which is how the song ends. If it was classical music, you'd almost call it like different fugues within the composition. Yeah, a couple things woven together. And one thing that I want to call attention to as we listen to the stems is how the A to B transition, that's something that a band, I can tell you from first-hand experience as being a player. As a drummer or as a bass player, I've been in these roles where you know that you're about, you're going to change at some point, and so do the other musicians. but it we don't know it's not written down anywhere. There's not like a clock you're watching. It's either a vibe or someone who kind of motions or puts their arm up.

This is musician language. And that's George in this band. It's George who would do the nod going, okay, we're going to the B section now. But it's funny because there's a few false starts. There's a few moments where I can hear the drummer kind of go, are we going here? No, no yet. Okay, back to the A.

So that's how they make this song together. All right. Tell us about how the song got recorded. Right. So we have a couple more names to put out there that are really unsung heroes because as we discussed, Parliament, the sound of Parliament is extraordinarily clean and listening back to these 50-year-old records. They sound, to my ears, they sound fairly modern by engineering. I would just go on a limb and say those Casey and the Sunshine Band recordings sound like stuffy and muffled and dusty. Aw.

But these sound pretty, no, I love them. Poor Casey. I'm just saying, like, I don't know who mastered them. They don't sound modern or clean. These are some clean recordings. I think that's what helps get them sampled so often. but please tell us about the recording. So the song is produced by George Clinton,

but as we know, George Clinton was doing a lot of things. Yeah, most musically... Some of them were having fun, that's right. So how did it get on tape? Well, we have two unsung heroes to thank for how well recorded this is. Not to mention recorded at all. One of them is Jim Callan, Engineer 1 and Jim Vitti, Engineer 2. My understanding in listening to an interview with Jim Callan

is that Jim Vitti recorded the band in Detroit and then the tapes went to L.A. where they were mixed. So these two guys made it sound incredible, both in the recording and in the mixing stage. So let's get into some stems. And maybe we start where we usually start, which is the drums. Cool. Well, listen, let's talk about the drums. This is Jerome Eugene Bigfoot Braley on the drums.

By the way, co-wrote Give Up the Funk, Tear the Roof off. Nice, yeah. With Clinton and Collins. And he was the central drummer on the tour that we just watched that incredible footage of. And here he is. One thing to notice is that crash. Is it every two bars. Like clockwork, you're going to get a crash every two bars.

And that's a real, that's a funkadelic thing. Not every song all the time. But like one thing I've really noticed in deconstructing these songs is they're kind of setting up. With that, you feel like it's a loop. With that, you feel like it's a two bar phrase where everything kind of happens. The bass, the chords, all of that are kind of contained and then repeat from one two bar chunk to the next. And that crash is like your brain's clue. cue that it's like again. And it becomes this hypnotic thing, which when we get to the B section,

we mentioned a moment ago that there's just two sections. That beat happens the entirety of the main A section, the main loop. When we get to the B section, the beat changes slightly. And here's the B section group. See if you can tell the difference. Oh, no crash there. So this is the swing, low, sweet chair section. It's got four on the floor, just kind of moving straight forward. We don't have the syncopated kick anymore. And we don't have those two symbols that we were just talking about. We don't have the symbols. It almost sounds more like a really slowed disco, like a 92 BPM disco. So, because it's more steady. Oh, we got to talk about the BPMs on this record too, because this is like in late 80s into 90s BPM record. To be clear, we're talking about not the 1980s and the 1990s,

to be clear. The actual number, right. The actual number of 80s. This groove zone is extraordinarily P-funk. It's extraordinarily Parliament to have these slower grooves. Disco starts to be in the 110's 120s. I would say the slowest disco

is like 104, 105. And most of it's like 120. The really fast stuff is in the 130s. This is so slowed down. But the only as I bring it up is just because in this section,

the swing low sweet chariot section, it's like a extremely slowed down. Totally. Almost like you're tripping on acid. Because of the floor on the floor. Right. We've got this 90, a little four on the floor.

It's a little, yeah. But this is relevant to our connection to P-Funk into G-Funk. Yes, I was going to say in the 1990s, hip-hop was primarily, I would say, between 82 at the absolute slowest. Most of it was like 85, 87 up to about, like, if you got to like 99, people looked at you funny. Like it was just like, man, is he trying to go mainstream? Like, it really was like high 80s, low 90s in terms of BPM.

And, you know, sonically, that made this. music really easy to sample because it was already in like the time zone. It wasn't much of a stretch to start rapping over it. Part of the magic of what George Clinton finds with his formula is that in this BPM zone, that crick in the neck thing I was talking about, you just can't stop but do this. If it were too fast, you couldn't do it. It would hurt. And also instrumentally more relevant, you know, to the stems that we're getting into. You can do more with the space that allows for. Yeah. It's not so slow that you have a lot of space and it's slow. There's a groove, but it's right in this magic hang zone

where you can do crazy stuff with the bass lines you can throw in some fills or you can hang back and let it be silent for a moment. All right, it's Bootsie time here at one song. We want to talk about the base and given some of the conversations we've had about, for example, flashlight. My first question is, who is playing the bass?

Is it Bootsie? William Earl Bootsie Collins is indeed playing the base. Okay. Good to know. Right, so we talked about how Bootsie brings the one with him from James Brown to George Clinton. And let's listen to what that sounds like in the context of this song.

Here's Bootsie, hitting the one. I'll give you the drums for the context. One. Notice the one is just the one. One. And then he's syncopating, leaving little spaces. Little hill. Can you give us just the bass though?

Without the drums covering up. One. And he's doing something. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, I love this. and he's got this Mutron phaser

and maybe a little bit of a wah effect on there. Why does it sound like it's... That's why it sounds watery. Uh-huh. That's why it sounds watery. What you're hearing is that there are two different bass tracks.

So there's an amplifier which has a mic set up. And that's what you're hearing. There's a second bass that's mixed in with it, which is D.I. to the board. And that sounds like this. And together, you're going to get the full sound.

Now that's... Both of those signals combined, which gives it less tin can. There is a third bass, which is clavinet, is playing doubling that line. And this is Bernie Worrell, who after Bootsie played through the whole song, went back and overdubbed a clavinet

that doubles Bootsie's thing. So you have a stack of three things playing each of these notes. Yeah. And here's what that sounds like. So that bass line has got three signals, bass. Wow.

Content. And it's tight, but it's loose. It's tight but it's loose. Yeah, they're not even playing the same note every single time. It's grooving. It's tight and yet it's loose and funky. It's this like complete contradiction in ways. In some ways, it's taking full advantage of the fact that this isn't music out of the computer, as we have to call it.

Like this is music by real humans. Essentially three different humans, even though it's two different humans, but essentially three human beings playing something, sometimes varying what they're playing and then layering. I mentioned before that this is an A B song, right? The A section, we're in the A section, it's the main groove. It's the syncopated kick drum. We're about to move to that other beat that we played before, which is the four on the floor, and that's the

Sweet and Low Sweet Chariot. There's this moment that I just noticed and I just felt like I understood what was happening. I felt my musician kinship was happening. Listen to what the drums and bass play here. It feels like they think they're going to be, but they're not yet. Oh, I love this.

Nope, one more. Jordan is like, not yet. George is like, not yet. You got one more. We're not there yet. But finally, they do go to the B section. And here's what that sounds like for Bootsie first. Man, I just, I feel like I'm a undercover cop with a fro and some bell bottoms.

And I'm just trying to find out who's got the hair one. Oh, wait until you hear what I'm about to add back in. Remember that clav? Oh, I know the Clavinette's doing a lot in this section. This is Bernie O'RL on Clav. I mentioned that he was a moment ago in the A section. He was just doubling what Bootsie was doing. But now he's got a really nice.

important. Here comes this star solo. And that really makes this part, right? Let's put everything in there. I'll put the drums and bass, at least. Yeah. Back. It just fits right in those little spaces. Now, if we're all playing that, I just got to ask, who's playing the keys on this song?

That is, we're all the keys. The clavinet is the only keys on the song? No, no. There's a few parts that are overdubbed. So, we're else playing all of the keyboards in the song. Okay. So... Because this song has, like, very famous sense. Let's just get into it. We're there. There's the sense, maybe. We got there. Let's hear some sense.

So Bernie Whirl is credited with the minimo, the ARP, string ensemble, which we just talked about in the Rayers episode, same instrument. And it's a very, to my ears, it's a super iconic parliament instrument that's a very high synth string sounds. Which you know isn't strings. It's a keyboard. But that's on this one too. And as you just heard, you know, there's Clavinette and Rhodes and Worley, et cetera. But he's playing all of them. Let's hear some of the sons.

These are all happening together with this. We need a little timekeeping, right? I'm a little lost. Where's the one? Yeah, that's a little later. Where is? Let's jump to that. There it is.

It's so piercing. I love it, though. To me, that almost sounds like that could have been generated by like some weird, you know, Morse code machine or something like that. But it's that part, it's that really high scent that doesn't seem like it should go as high as it goes. that truly makes this part of the song. I think part of what Bernie World's genius is is that he's got all these parts.

He's got all the knowledge musical and he's got all the instruments and these new sounds. Child prodigy. Put your children in those music classes. It pays off. And he's experimenting and it's okay. He feels the looseness about like trying things

and seeing where it goes rather than finding the perfect part and comping chords and jazz stuff. It's like it's I think it's sonic. That's what it is. It's sound base. He's really going for what sound is interesting here. What is an interesting melody and interesting sound here? It's not boring.

And as music listeners, we just don't want to be bored. Oh, man, that scent is so good. As we saw in that wonderful footage out in the park in front of the amphitheater, there are a lot of musicians in this group. What are some other instruments you want to isolate for us? All right. Well, there's some guitar on this track, although it's pretty low in the mix in the final. But it's fun that we get to hear it a little more prominently.

Because it's a problem in song. It's not fungadelic where the guitars would probably be more prominent. Would they be potentially soloing and riffing the whole? Okay. So we know that credited on the record are Glenn Goins and Gary Scheider. a.k.a. Star Child, aka Diaper Man, on guitar. And also Michael Hampton. Even the guy in the diaper was playing more instruments than George Clinton. He wasn't just wearing a diaper. He had a function.

Clearly. No, no, he absolutely did. So I'm pretty sure this is Gary Scheider, but I'm not positive. It's one of those records where it's just a list for every song. It isn't mapped to the song who played what, where. But here's the guitar part. That's the hook, basically. And here it is on all the other instruments. It's duop. They're harmonizing. These instruments are harmonizing like a duop group. So they're in unison up until this really exciting moment, which is one of my favorite. So there's this one fill that you hear harmonizes what you're referring to.

Here's the guitar part by itself. And then I'll build on it so you can hear how the harmony stack came together. Right? That's the one little hook. The other part of it is in the clavonet. And when you put them together, it's... Yeah, that's really nice. Right? I'll give you the context of that. And it contributes to the underwater feel of it all. It's the underwater feel.

That's like the jellyfish swimming away. Yeah. Yeah. And it contributes to the magic trick of how this song is simultaneously a groove and a jam that could go on for days. Yeah. But has just enough little variation and the change to the B, of course. It's not a repetition that's going to drive you nuts.

It's going to drive you nuts. That's right. It's really satisfying when you get these little things like that film. It's not the Roots Reggae band playing at senior frogs. You're like, I got to get the hell out of here. The horns are really cool in this song. I read where Fred Wesley had a bit of a culture shot coming to the sessions because, you know, he said the guys of the band would come in and dressed in their admittedly flamboyant character costumes

during the sessions. And Wesley would come in wearing a three-piece suit because that's what he was used to working with James Brown. Well, that's exactly right. See, now we have a connection to the James Brown connection. Totally. On this record, we have two more former James Brown J.Bs join the band. Thanks to Bootsie who brings them in. It is Fred Wesley and Macio Parker on trombone and sax for spects.

A.k.a. the horny horns from the JVs. Yeah. Yeah, this is their first record. And Wesley also says that he brought in some beboblicks. His modality for how to come up with a part, basically, came from his jazz background. So he's thinking, what bebop can I put in here into this funk medley, this stew? So this booyabase of sounds and styles also has a little bit of like 40s jazz in it. Absolutely. I think, you know, Fred Wesley famously is very prominently displayed on doing it to death. In fact, that's the song where you hear James giving him a special show. He's like, Fred?

Fred, can it take us higher? Take us higher. Those J.B.'s records are so good. They're so good. And by the way, Horny Horns have like a great career. They're on Paul Abdul's viabology. They're on Delights. Grooves in the heart.

Along with Bootsie, who's also on that song. Another connection. Exactly. The Funk lived on. So it's the Horny Horns. There's somebody else on there. That's right. We also have a couple Brecker brothers, Randy and his brother, Michael.

And Boom and Joe Farrell are also credited. So we have about six horns and you'll hear them we isolate it, that they're all harmonizing and stacking together quite nicely to make this. And there's little bebop licks, little like, syncopated like, you know, Charlie Parker inspired parts right there. Well, he said he was

a big fan of Louis Jordan, which makes sense because Lewis was doing all this kind of like jazz. So it's sort of like a big band version of boogie-woogie. Yeah. You know, that would have influenced, since that music came out in like the 50s, that would have definitely influenced what George and his

parents' generation was in two. And so that comes to bear in this song. And then in the B section, they do a little call and response, which is fun. And then they're on a different downbeat. It's interesting how they kind of create oral interest with these crazy really constructed parts. The rest of it is spontaneous,

but with these, these are written parts. This is regimented. You got six people that got to play something that they all know what it is. So this is the part which is arranged and like, you know, determined in advance, while the rest is a jam. And you can really hear the call and response.

Yeah, I love that. One of the things I love about this song is, this is the first song where George introduces his character of Star Child. And I will say as a writer, there was one time when Bashir and I were in an editing bay, and while we were editing, we felt a presence behind us. And we turned around, and it was Chris Rock.

And he didn't know us from anything. He's like, y'all doing sketch comedy? And we were like, yes, there we are. And he's like, write characters. He was like, people laugh at a sketch, but they remember characters. And I remember that that was like so, it's definitely affected our career every day since. Wow. And Clinton had sort of a similar revelation.

He said, this was the beginning of the characters in the music. I realized by that time that if I dealt with characters, I wouldn't have to worry about getting old. Mickey Mouse never gets old. Cartoons and characters never get old. They have a new bugs money for the new era. I can't stress enough how smart this is. because if you go see George Clinton right now, it's not just a guy, you know,

who looks older in a suit. Like, no, he's still got like the fancy crazy glasses and the wigs and everything. And that allows you to see the character over the person. By the way, another kiss connection. Those guys can like tour till their grave because they've got the makeup on

and the outfits and everything. They could replace members, as they sometimes do with new people and you wouldn't even know. Dat Punk figured it out. They're like, hey, it doesn't have to be two, you know, French guys. It can be robots. And who doesn't like robots?

Big brain. And by the way, Star Child is not George Clinton. You know, Calvin Bradis is not Snoop Dog. But the Snoop Dog character will never age the same way. He's not really a doctor. Exactly. Not really a doctor. Snoop, not really a canine.

It's amazing how that works. And I do think that it goes to the larger point that as we said, this song is, it seems like the foundation of so much that would come just, you know, three or four years later, you know, in the popularized guys. We know that hip hop technically starts around 1973, but it introduces this idea of, you know, the character. And, you know, with the exception of someone like a Kanye West, what rapper doesn't sort of give us a character and a pseudonym, so to speak, to deliver their music? Exactly. So let's hear some of Star Child.

Well, all right. Star Child, citizens of the universe, recording angels. We have returned to claim the pyramids. part in on the mothership. I am the mothership connection. And this goes to one of the favorite things that I love about the lyrics of this song is that he takes a spiritual from the old days. Basically like, Lord, won't you please come save us?

Swing low, sweet chariot. They're singing basically take us to heaven. But in his sort of Afrofuturism version of this, and we've already said like he saw the angels as being sort of like alien in nature, He's saying, hey, swing low, sweet chariot and let me ride the spaceship back to a place where I'll be happier. Like, it's, it's taking a spiritual and with religious undertones, and it's turning it into a sci-fi story. Let's hear it. Swing down, sweet cherry stopping.

Let me ride. We start solo. Swing down, sweet cherry stopping. And then we built to the barbershop duo. Swing down, sweet cherry stop. Totally. Let me ride. Swing down, sweet cherry stop and let me ride. That's so evocative.

So good. Not just decades earlier. I mean, this is evocative of a century. A century earlier. Absolutely. I totally agree. I totally agree. It takes you back 100 years.

But also because it's evolving spaceships, it's moving you forward 500,000 years. That's what makes the song so special. It's building in all these different eras. And laying the groundwork for a thing that we now take for granted a little bit from the genre of hip-hop, which is mixing sounds and genres and eras and references. He's doing it in this song, you know, in so many ways. The chariot in Dr. Drey's since being an impala. Now let's go back in time as we're talking about.

This obviously comes from another era. We hear that in the Clinton version, especially. So the song Swing Down Sweet Chariot, separate from Swing Low Sweet Chariot, is actually the lyric is itself in the public domain. There's a version from 1946, which sounds like this, and you'll recognize some things like the rhythm of the melody. Right, that rhythm. Different melody.

Let me ride. That rhythm is right there in this Golden Gate Quartet version from 1946 of the song Swing Down Chariot, which itself is a version of a completely different song, but obviously adapted from the spiritual. This is the earliest recorded version of the famous spiritual Swinglow Sweet Chariot. This is the Fisk Jubilee Singers from 1909. By the way, this is an African-American Accomaella Ensemble in Nashville in the turn of the century. We know, however, that it goes even further back.

There isn't a recording, but it's written by a freedman named Wallace Willis, who's credited with composing it in the mid-1800. So credit where due, at least as far back as... Was it credited before or after the Civil War? Do we know? We just know mid-1800. That's as much as we know in Oklahoma,

Indian territory, Oklahoma. We don't... Wallace Willis. There's a great story there. I bet there's a reason why he had to go all the way to Oklahoma to get a patent. And there's no reason to end the story there. There's an investigation to be had about where maybe he got it from. I'm sure. Like, I'm sure he did, he may not have invented it. Right. But the fact that he had to go that far west to get a copyright is probably a story into itself. Bringing it all home, though, we have this mid-1800s line that then gets translated into the spiritual that we know, swing-loose, with the melody that we understand because it's been recorded. And it goes to the top of the pot charts, 110 years later. Exactly right. We've been talking about this.

It's Dre interpulation. Let's hear it. Creeping. Back on duck, feet on D's. Creeping. Down the back street on D's. I got my Glock caught because niggas won't fees.

No, seem as I said it. Seems I got sweated by somebody with the tech nine, trying to take mine. I have a good Dres. I wish that I hadn't stopped it. You want to make noise, make boys. All those lyrics in my brain, by the way. Yeah. From that, I remember when that album came out, like, by the time this song starts on that album,

the chronic, I feel like all. all of us new. God, damn, this is a fucking classic album. Yeah. It's not a big fan

of gangsterism in rap at the time. I was from the public enemy school where I was like, this is hurting our communities. That's the conversation

for another day. What I will say is that I knew when this song in particular started, I was like, Drey has won the creative conversation

because it was too infectious. It was just too good. Too hokey. It was too hooky. It was clean. It's It sounded great on your speakers, whether you had like the fancy Allen Ed AutoZone speakers or whether you just had like the factory Honda speakers. It all sounded great.

And it's such a great homage to George, to George Clinton and The Mothership Connection, where it comes from, we're going to get into a couple more layers that we've already alluded to. But just two years later, it already has become kind of a canonical reference to West Coastness. Absolutely. So much so that regulate Warren G and Nate Dodd. Go back and listen to that episode. But just two years later, it gets referenced right here. She said my chorus broke down and just sing real nice with your lent her. Nice callback. Nice callback. That's right. You know, a lot's been said about George Clinton's influence on G-Funk with songs like Snoop Dogs, what's my name and Ice Cube's Bog Gun.

But, like, literally his fingerprints are across the genres. And even in hip-hop where, like, it was very stratified, whether it was like East Coast or West Coast. Like, I could think of De La Sol's me, myself, and I, which sampled knee-deep. Crucial conflict out of Chicago. Crucial conflicts, hey. which sampled I'll stay. Eric B and Rakim's absolute classic,

I know you got soul with sampled. You'll like it too. It's been a long time. I shouldn't have left to. Without a strong rhyme and step to, think of how many weeks shows you're slept through. Time's up.

There's almost just too much to count. And it is still being loved because I think it's very important to point out as much as we've talked about him laying the groundwork for hip hop for, let's say, it's, you know, first 30 years of being on the radio. He's still being sampled. That's right.

He's been sampled by Kendrick Lamar for Wesley's theory. He's on that record. It's not just a sample. He's on the track. Totally. Yeah. We talked about Redbone with a Chauder Scambino. There's also burning down the house by Flying Lotus.

And hyena by Travis Scott. This is a man who's still relevant when it comes to today's leading contemporary hip hop artists. With all this, you know, sort of funk water under the bridge, what do you think is the lasting legacy of Mothership Connect? and George Clinton. So as we've been discussing, there's the mothership connection, and then there's the James Brown and Bootsie connection. Yeah.

And what's really interesting to me is to think of maybe James Brown and Bootsie being the link. The James Brown era of breakbeats and sort of early hip-hop has a lot of James Brown. We mentioned Eric B. and Rakim. I know you got soul. Today, if you were to do that, you'd be sounding like early hip-hop. You'd be sounding like the 80s via the late 60s, early 70s sample that you'd be using. But if you sample something from the P-Funk catalog, it's going to sound. more contemporary. It will sound more modern. It might evoke the 90s as another layer,

kind of like the swing low layer has like five different eras just by the use of that. But I think it's really interesting that as a bridge we literally have on this song, three performers, three instrument players that had been with James Brown, brought the one with them, brought some of the techniques of funk, and brought some of that with them into this new entity with this song in this year in 1975 and set up this new 30 years, as we've been saying, this next chapter of hip-hop. that. But Diyah, what about you? What do you think the legacy is? Look, man, I think of George Clinton is hip-hop's crazy cool uncle. And in some ways, I feel like he's more the pure father of what hip-hop becomes than some of the people who get name-checked for that regularly.

Because think about it, like David Bowie has the Ziggy Stardust, you know, persona. You know, he's got that character who he has. But you wouldn't call him the father of hip-hop. You know, you've got the Jamaican culture and the chatting over the record. So George isn't the first to sort of do this proto hip hop. That's right. Proto rap, I should say, over track. But you've got that element too. And then you've got just the pure danceability of funk coming in on the one and that BPM that's so important to hip hop.

And yet that's there too via George and Bernie and Bootsie. So when you think about somebody who's assembling all the different elements of hip hop at a time right before hip hop, explodes, it'd be hard to make the case that anyone is more responsible for that assemblage than George Clinton. That is a great way of putting it. Assembly is such a great word for it to. He's assembling the eras, the sounds, the techniques, the performers. There's 200 members.

There's 200 players amongst the 50-year career of Peefung. There's been 200 people that play with the bands. So he's finding talent and assembling that as well. Okay, luxury, it's time for one more song. This is the segment where we share a deep cut or hidden gym. With you, the One Song Nation and with each other, luxury. Would you like to go first? Sure.

Well, another band that was heavily influenced by Parliament Funkadelic and another one of my favorite unsung bands. They're called Fishbone. L.A. people, no fishbone well. Shut up to Norwood. I can't believe it's taking us 90 episodes for me to finally play a Fishbone song. But here it is, Bonin in the Boneyard from Truth and Soul.

I love Fishbone. What a great call. One of the most exciting live bands I've ever seen, and that is a sentiment shared by many people. They've not gotten their due in the world. Go check out Fishbone. When I first moved to LA, I met Norwood. What a cool guy. They have a new record coming out, and George Clinton is featured on it.

So it's just all coming full circle. That's fantastic. What about you, Diallo? What is your one more song? I'm always interested in trying to break, you know, sub-genres like drum and bass and UK garage into more of the mainstream U.S. musical diet. And Pink Panther, who I've talked about on the show before, has come out with a brand-new album, Fancy That. But for those of you who like, you know, the electronic music of the early 2000s, I'm talking Underworld and Basement Jacks. Just know that this young lady in collaboration with her producer partners has released this new

album that samples a lot of artists from that era. Here's just one song off of that album. It's girls like me. I mean, like, if you listen to that song, you'll hear a sampling, not of just Romeo by Baseman Jacks, one of my favorite Baseman Jacks. you'll also hear Always Be There, which admittedly I'm furious about because I always felt like I was going to at some point in life sample always be there for one of my own songs. Pink Panthers has beat me to it. Oh, go get you Pink Panthers.

No, but it's not too late because now if you do it, there'll be a reference. There'll be a layered reference there. I like it even better now. I like it. I'll be the Warren G to her Dr. Dre. There you go. Exactly right. As always, if you have an idea for one more song, you can find us on Instagram and TikTok.

You can find me on Instagram at Diallo, DialO, just six letters. and on TikTok at Diallo-R-R-L. And you can find me on Instagram at L-U-X-X-U-R-Y and on TikTok at Luxury-X. And hey, go follow One-Song on Instagram and TikTok. Go follow at One-Song podcast for exclusive content. You can also watch full episodes of One-Song on YouTube and Spotify. Just search for One-Song podcast. We'd love it if you like and subscribe.

Also, be sure to check out the One-Song Spotify playlist for all the songs we discuss in our episodes. You can find the link in our episode description. And if you made it this far, we think that means you like this podcast. So please don't forget to give us five stars. Leave a review and share us with someone you think would like it. It really helps keep the show going. Luxury, help us in this thing. I'm producer, DJ songwriter, and music call it is luxury.

I'm actor, writer, director, and sometimes DJ Diallo Riddle. And this is one song. We will see you next time. This episode is produced by Melissa Duenas. Our video editor is Casey Simonson. Our associate producer is Jeremy Bimbo, mixing by Michael Hardman, and engineering by Eric Hicks. Production supervision by Razak Boykin.

Additional production support from Z. Taylor. This show is executive produced by Kevin Hart, Mike Stein, Brian Smiley, Eric Eddings, Eric Waddings, Eric Wael, and Leslie Guam.