An ode to Bootzilla.

Like many young musicians too weird and too loose (lucid?) for James Brown's militantly-conducted backing band, Bootsy Collins was plucked and abducted by the Funkadelic mob, joining the ranks of a new crew of cosmic bandits.

Aboard The Mothership, Bootsy, co-captains George Clinton and Bernie Worrell, and the ever-rotating roster of funkonauts touring music's new horizon, would shape generations of Starchildren to come. From Digital Underground to Snoop Dogg to Tupac to UGK, all the way up to Childish Gambino — whose crowned song of 2017, "Redbone," is essentially a protest anthem reconstructed in the key of Bootsy's "I'd Rather Be With You" — decades of funk and funk-indebted classics are laced with the Ohio-born bassist's elastic thump.

In celebration of the legend's 67th lap around the sun and the unscalable footprint he's left and continues to lay, we've gathered some of the most crucial cuts that have borrowed his rubbery rhythmics and warbled low-end mastery in a new installment of our ongoing In Hip-Hop and Beyond series.

P-Funk to G-Funk to Mars and back, you can hear it all below, including selections from Gang Starr, Knxwledge, Ice Cube, Missy Elliot, Keith Murray, Rapsody, and so many more. Hit the link for more episodes of the series and all of the aux authority.

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