Well, this is nice. Legendary funk group Parliament, without whom the landscape of modern music would be radically different, have released their new album Medicaid Fraud Dogg. It’s their first album in literally 38 years – the last was 1980’s Trombipulation.
Parliament was one half of the Parliament-Funkadelic (or P-Funk) collective, which innovated insanely on the basic forms of soul, funk and R&B established during the 1950s and 1960s. Parliament tended towards the realm of spacey, horn-laden funk with kooky sci-fi lyrics, whereas Funkadelic covered the spectrum of harder-edged, more experimental funk odysseys.
Famed bandleader George Clinton has released a number of albums and projects over the intervening years, but Medicaid Fraud Dogg is the first since 1980 to don the Parliament moniker. The new album features P-Funk horn players Fred Wesley, Pee Wee Ellis, Greg Thomas, and Benny Cowan among a number of other players.
The new album continues the weirdly labyrinthine and overt-the-top P-Funk mythology, which concerns the goings-on around a number of wild sci-fi characters.
“This is to let the people know that Atomic Dog and Mothership Connection are not the end of the story,” he said in an interview last year with The Music, discussing the upcoming album.. “So when you see Medicaid Fraud Dog, you’ll see Sir Nose is still out here fuckin’ up and Dr Funkenstein is out here inoculating people with the funk.”
You can listen to it below on Spotify if you so wish. What a time to be alive.
