Happy 50th Anniversary to Parliament’s third studio album Chocolate City, originally released April 8, 1975.
For all of its excesses and associated messiness, the group Funkadelic figured out what they were pretty early on. Fronted by musical genius and visionary George Clinton, the group began releasing albums in 1970 and continued at a rapid clip. Part of the reason was because Clinton and the other members of the crew established the funk band’s musical identity early on. Which is to say, the excess and messiness was intrinsic to its identity, along with rock influenced riffs and heavy doses (pun intended) of psychedelic drugs.
Parliament, Funkadelic’s counterpart, proved to be a bit more slippery. As Clinton wrote in his memoir, Brothers Be, Yo Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Hard On You?, “Parliament was, from the start, intended to capture mainstream attention and bend the ear of radio.” But finding pop success wasn’t easy, as it took three tries for Clinton to get the approach right.
First, as The Parliaments, the group recorded and released Motown-influenced, “drunken” doo-wop music. Clinton tinkered with the sound slightly when the group put out Osmium (1970), before shelving the group as a concept for a few years to focus on Funkadelic. It wasn’t until Up For The Down Stroke (1974) that Clinton and crew really got the group on the right path, finding the correct balance of pop-influenced funk and the irreverence that pervaded their sensibilities. The album’s title track was Parliament-Funkadelic’s biggest hit to that point, and the long player itself was an early critical and commercial triumph.
Parliament followed Up For The Down Stroke with Chocolate City, their third album. Released 50 years ago, it’s a striking piece of work. It’s not their best project, but it was intrinsic to the group’s development, laying the groundwork for what they’d eventually become.
The main attraction of Chocolate City is its title track, one of the most memorable and unique entries in the Parliament-Funkadelic catalogue. The track is a meditation on the expanding Black population in the United States and the increasing importance of the Black vote. The song was apparently inspired by news reports that stated that Washington DC had an 80% Black population, motivating Clinton to speak on how the Black population could and should be a catalyst for positive change.
Listen to the Album:
“Chocolate City” lacks much in the way of traditional song structure, as Clinton riffs in a conversational manner throughout its five-and-a-half-minute runtime. He speaks directly to the people of the nation’s capital, occasionally interspersing political slogans, as Parliament’s back-up singers chant “Gaining on ya!”
The song’s content was revolutionary, and often jaw-dropping, for the time. Clinton ruminates on the increasing number of major cities with large Black populations (Newark, Gary, Atlanta, New York, and Los Angeles), while declaring, “They still call it the White House, but that’s a temporary condition, too,” presaging Barack Obama’s presidency by over three-and-a-half decades. He also muses on an expansive and exclusively Black mid-1970s presidential cabinet, envisioning executive positions for such luminaries as Muhammad Ali, Aretha Franklin and Stevie Wonder.
“Chocolate City” is most musically striking as well. It lacks percussion (aside from an occasional hi-hat), as the guitar and keys set the groove, the horn section wails, the bassline keeps the rhythm.
Clinton lamented in his memoir that “the rest of the album didn’t deliver on [“Chocolate City’s] promise,” as it’s largely apolitical. Which did not mean it was bad, but it wasn’t as thematically focused. Many of the other songs focus on the message that Clinton and crew espoused on many of their past and future projects, imploring their listeners to free their minds through music. A lot of the album’s importance to Parliament occurred behind the scenes, as they further developed their songwriting techniques throughout the recording process.
Clinton wrote that overall, Chocolate City “was a landmark for how it expanded our sound, and much of that expansion came courtesy of Bootsy Collins.” William “Bootsy” Collins had been playing with Clinton’s collective since Funkadelic’s America Eats Its Young (1972). He had formed The Pacemakers funk band in the late 1960s and joined James Brown’s operation in 1970. By the mid -1970s, he had left the Godfather of Soul’s operation and was getting close to reaching his final “Bootsy” form.
Throughout Chocolate City, Collins made use of the Mu-Tron III, a guitar-effect pedal that he would run his bass through, giving it a distinct “wah-wah” sound. Collins’ most memorable usage of the Mu-Tron on the album is on “Ride On,” an upbeat party jam of a single. Collins gives a virtuoso performance, as the watery bass practically pops through the speakers. He’s accompanied by heavy doses of horns and Eddie Hazel’s wandering twang on guitar.
Clinton gives a lot of the credit to Chocolate City’s artistic success to the adaptability of Hazel. Hazel had been with Clinton’s band since the beginning, backing up The Parliaments and acting as the backbone of the early configurations of Funkadelic. He was also a rock guitarist in the mold of Jimi Hendrix and, not surprisingly, an amazing soloist. His nearly 10-minute solo on Maggot Brain’s title track is the stuff of legend, and his brilliance is apparent throughout Parliament-Funkadelic’s initial run.
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But throughout Chocolate City, he reins things in, focusing on providing the rhythm and groove. It’s an understated but effective performance, as he establishes his adeptness at playing straight-ahead, party-oriented funk music on tracks like “Together,” “What Comes Funky,” “If It Don’t Fit (Don’t Force It),” and “Big Footin’.” Even “Side Effects,” where the group bemoans the manipulative nature of the object of their desire, is a rollicking blast of a song.
There are a couple of points where Chocolate City deviates from its up-tempo exhibitions. “Let Me Be” sounds like it would be played in the first act of Parliament-Funkadelic’s version of Phantom Of The Opera, as Hazel takes the lead vocal, backed by Worrell’s effortless keyboard wizardry. “I Misjudged You” is Parliament’s mid-1970s interpretation of a Motown ballad. Clinton had composed it while songwriting for the label, and had demo-ed an early version of it. What appears on Chocolate City is a bit overwrought, but technically sound.
“Chocolate City had set the table for Parliament,” Clinton wrote, allowing them to create fun and funky music, while providing them with a path forward for the future. It showed a potential that was realized by the end of that same year, with the release of Mothership Connection (1975). Chocolate City might not be in my personal Parliament top five, but I’m not sure that they would have become funk legends without it.
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