Parliament’s third album, and their second for the Casablanca label, limped at No. 91 on the album charts. The two singles on the album did not do better. But what do the graphics know? Released on April 8, 1975, Chocolate City is a rock-cold classic: funky, cheeky, calm but energetic, fun but irritated, innocent but political, simple but baroque, provocative but smiling, complex but funky. It’s life as pure funk, siblings, hitting the heart of the non-funky world. Chocolate City? Let’s go.
Listen to Chocolate City on Apple Music and Spotify.
Super radical
From the title song to the final fade, Chocolate City kicks ass. Just so you get the message “Chocolate City” the song begins its work in its own way. It’s funk without relying on drums or rhythms, in particular; the melody winds its way through the state of underground black America, 1975, claiming Washington, DC on the basis of population distribution, but treating it as the results of the ballot that takes place on election night: “We are coming arriving in New York, I was told, “Don’t be surprised if Muhammad Ali is in the White House”, and the name of this building is “just a temporary condition”. They don’t call him DC, they call him CC.
Are they kidding? No, they’re serious, smirking and super-radical for 1975, a year after President Nixon resigned in the wake of the Watergate crisis and America was trying to feel normal again. But the moment you absorb the radical message of the title cut, “Ride On” ignites. Chew up a drum machine recipe taken straight from the Sly & The Family Stone cookbook, with a heavy groove that sustains the odd, quintessentially P-Funk vocal chorus that sounds almost opera and derived from gospel, the message of ” Ride On ”it’s simple: this is no time to procrastinate, folks, you have to break free on the dance floor. ‘Together’ makes sure you know that Parliament really does hurt, in case there is any doubt. These days we know that; Back then, George Clinton and his team were on the rise and still bringing together an audience that had yet to learn how much they were dropping the beat. This gritty love song had previously been recorded by Bootsy, his brother Phelps and Gary “Mudbone” Cooper.
Deep grooves and edgy attitudes
The “Side Effects” churning is heavier, and a reminder of the band’s work in the early ’70s in their Funkadelic incarnation, although its shiny horn arrangement would have been avoided by this time. “What Comes Funky” is a celebration of descent, which of course Parliament has always approved. “Let Me Be” features Bernie Worrell’s classical piano and synth, lighting up Bach much further than it had been electrified before, on a ballad as serious as climate change and hardly less devastating. For a slight relief, “If It Don’t Fit Don’t Force It” is a bubbling and rhythmic Parliament classic, the horns twisting and the groove spinning along.
“I Misjudged You” wanders the territory the band started with as The Parliaments, the vocals and harmony strings making this tune as lush as any soul ballad from the 60s. Its tale of thwarted romance could play perfectly seriously, but it can also be read as a Zappa-ish parody, or a beginning 10cc pastiche, if it weren’t for the heavy soul exposed. Damn yeah sure, they can do that stuff too.
Chocolate City ends with the lead vocal lead of Glen Goins, the surprisingly powerful singer who spent two years with P-Funk before cancer claimed him. “Big Footin ‘”, meanwhile, puts so much emphasis on “one” (the first beat of the bar, the basis of the funk rhythm) that it lands like a yeti hitting a dancefloor.
The stars of the show? They claimed it was a collective effort, but Scolder Bootsy, Worrell Conservatory, and Father George Clinton are pushing Chocolate City into the booming parliament of the mid-1970s. While they can mess around here and there, it is. are still a hungry band that yearns to be recognized for the funk freaks that they really are. The horns and harmonies are perfect, the furrows deep and the attitude edgy and sneering, as well as sharp and sincere.
Chocolate City helped build Parliament, and it remains a funk classic. It is not a temporary condition.
Chocolate City has been reissued on 180g black vinyl and can be purchased here.
Listen to the best of Parliament on Apple Music and Spotify.
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