Recording both as Parliament and Funkadelic, George Clinton revolutionized R&B during the ’70s, twisting soul music into funk by adding influences from several late-’60s acid heroes: Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, and Sly Stone. The Parliament/Funkadelic machine ruled black music during the ’70s, capturing over 40 R&B hit singles (including three number ones) and recording three platinum albums.

The 1975 Parliament masterpiece Mothership Connection was the group’s fourth overall and first to feature Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley. An otherworldly concept album that delves deeply into the collective’s P-Funk mythology, Mothership Connection is home to such stone-cold, heavily sampled funk classics as “P-Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up),” “Mothership Connection (Star Child),” and “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker).” The Library of Congress added it to the National Recording Registry in 2011, declaring “The album has had an enormous influence on jazz, rock and dance music.”

“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 Star Trek, 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.” – George Clinton

Continuing with its Respect The Classics campaign UMe will be reissuing Parliament’s Mothership Connection back on vinyl with a limited edition 3D cover that’s as mind blowing as the music!