Mothership Connection


Mothership Connection is the fourth album by American funk band Parliament, released on December 15, 1975 on Casablanca Records. This concept album of P-Funk mythology is usually rated as one of Parliament's best. Mothership Connection was the first P-Funk album to feature Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley, who had left The J.B.'s, James Brown's backing band.
Mothership Connection became Parliament's first album to be certified gold and later platinum. The Library of Congress added the album to the National Recording Registry in 2011, declaring "The album has had an enormous influence on jazz, rock and dance music."

History

Describing the album, George Clinton said "We had put black people in situations nobody ever thought they would be in, like the White House. I figured another place you wouldn't think black people would be was in outer space. I was a big fan of , so we did a thing with a pimp sitting in a spaceship shaped like a Cadillac, and we did all these James Brown-type grooves, but with street talk and ghetto slang."
Dr. Dre sampled the songs "Mothership Connection " and "P-Funk " on his album The Chronic.

Reception

On release, Rolling Stone called it a "parody of modern funk" and stated that "unlike the Ohio Players or Commodores, the group refuses to play it straight. Instead, Clinton spews his jive, conceived from some cosmic funk vision." Village Voice critic Robert Christgau said, "That DJ from Chocolate City, or maybe it's the Chocolate Milky Way, keeps the beat going with nothing but his rap, some weird keyboard, and cymbals for stretches of side one. And later produces the galactic 'Give Up the Funk' and a James Brown tribute that goes 'gogga googa, gogga googa'—only believe me, that doesn't capture it."
Retrospectively, it gained high regard, being named TV network VH1's 55th greatest album of all time, and #276 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Vibe listed Mothership Connection in their "Essential Black Rock Recordings" list, and it was included in the 2005 book, 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. Rolling Stone's 2003 review again gave the record 5 stars out of 5: "The masterpiece, the slang creator, the icon builder, the master narrative--or 'the bomb,' as Clinton succinctly put it before anyone else."

Track listing

Personnel

;Production
  • Produced by George Clinton
  • Engineered by Jim Vitti, Ralph Jim Callow
  • Mastered by Allen Zentz
  • Photography by David Alexander
  • Art Direction and Design by Gribbitt!

    Chart positions

Certification

Singles released

  • P-Funk -NB 852
  • Tear the Roof Off the Sucker -NB-856
  • Star Child-NB 864