"Funk is gonna always survive" - George Clinton On Working w/ Flying Lotus & Kendrick Lamar

Well before WOKE or making their collaborative debut on Kendrick Lamar's opening funk odyssey to To Pimp A Butterfly, George Clinton and Flying Lotus knew each other's styles all-too-well. FlyLo, astute as he is, had long been an admirer of Dr. Funkenstein's cosmic slop, but we've yet to hear Clinton's take on mingling with the stars of our time.

A recent interview with ye old funky one conducted by Noisey, reveals some intimate details on their time together in the studio, what it was like to align with Lamar and FlyLo, even claiming to have a full collaborative album en route. Elsewhere in the interview, Clinton speaks to the liberating properties of funk, Afrofuturism, what it means to go pop and what we can expect from and the intergalactic funk mob. Catch a few compelling clips from George Clinton's interview down below and hit the link to catch the full script.

>>>Read the full interview (via Noisey) 

Shifting audiences and psychedelics:

"Any time you go pop or cross over, you already begin to lose the audience that you started out with. It just so happened that the black music became the pop music of the next generation. What’s really black for ten years becomes really pop the next ten years. With rock ‘n’ roll, a lot of black people think it’s white music totally. They don’t know about Little Richard and Chuck Berry. The only thing they know is that Jimi Hendrix played some psychedelic. So yeah, you lose your audience if you go from one audience to the next. Most of the black music you get today—hip-hop—it’s totally pop."

Working with Flying Lotus: 

"When I met Kendrick Lamar, that’s when I met him. We did “Wesley’s Theory.” I was just swept by their styles. As a matter of fact, we’re doing a record together now with Parliament. We’ll be doing some stuff with Flying Lotus on that. We’re going to be doing an album together."

The tradition:

"Funk is gonna always survive. It’s about doing the best you can, and if you do the best that you can do, you just leave it alone and let the funk take over. It usually leads you to where you need to go. Right now, I’m having pretty good luck working with Louie Vega, Kendrick Lamar, and now, Ice Cube. We did the single for the video “Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard On You,” which will be out in a couple of weeks. And the version with Kendrick and Ice Cube will be out soon. So, just do the best you can and funk leads you to where you’re supposed to go. And I think I’m in the right place right now between the new hip-hop, the old hip-hop, and the electronic dance music. Still doing the funk the way I’d like to."