Latest / The Breakfast Club / INTERVIEW: George Clinton Talks P-Funk, Afrofuturism, 50 Years Of Dr. Funkenstein, AI, Prince + More

Transcript

INTERVIEW: George Clinton Talks P-Funk, Afrofuturism, 50 Years Of Dr. Funkenstein, AI, Prince + More · The Breakfast Club

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Hold up. Every day I wake up.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: Wake your ass up.
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: The Breakfast Club. Y'all finished or y'all done? Yep, it's
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: the world's most dangerous morning show, The Breakfast Club.
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne Tha God, LL Cool Bay,
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Lauren La Rosa is here as well. Envy and Jess aren't,
• 0:17
  Speaker 2: but we have a legend in the building. We use
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: that term a lot nowadays, but boy, some people actually
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: deserve it.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: And George Clinton is one of them.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: You make me laugh. You make me smile and shit.
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: How you doing, brother? Thanks, man. I'm doing good, man.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: How you feeling, man? How's your energy, man? You know,
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: I'm up in the morning. I'm ready for them.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: Parliament Funkadelic, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: All that kind of stuff. That's the overall icon, man.
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: Is that what that is? Come on, man.
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: Well, I guess there's a lot of history in that.
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: I'm walking around here in New York looking at all
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: the places I used to walk up and down the
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: street hustling songs and stuff. It's a good memory, so
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: I guess there's some legend shit in there somewhere. Completely
• 0:56
  Speaker 1: different world nowadays, right? But it's still fun to be around.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: I'm loving up and down Broadway. I used to work
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: on the Brill Building right there on 50th and Broadway.
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: What's it called?
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: The Brill Building. That's where all the songwriters was at.
• 1:11
  Speaker 2: Okay, okay.
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: 57, 8, right on through the 60s. So we used
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: to hustle songs out there for everybody. So coming back
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: through there now, looking at the area, how all the
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: people are, it brings back good memories.
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: Did you envision life at this age back then?
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: Did you even think you would see it? No, I
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: envisioned forever. Yeah. I just look at it, I'm going
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: to do this shit the rest of my life, and
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: it's going to be music, and that's what I'm going
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: to do. That's right. That's right. I'm going to find
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: a way to do whatever the music change, whatever styles.
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: I knew I had to figure out what the new
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: thing is. So I knew that route early in life then.
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: Whatever it was, I was going to do it.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: Before Parliament, before Funkadelic, before the costumes, the mothership, who
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: was George Clinton when nobody knew his name?
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Dude in Newark, New Jersey over there singing doo-wops like
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: the Spaniels or the Flamingos, wanting to be a Frankie Lyman.
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: I had worked in a barbershop from about 17 on,
• 2:14
  Speaker 1: 18 on, doing Process Hair, you know, the waves and stuff. Do-wopping,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: rehearsing for the music, group getting together for when we
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: become stars. Then Motown show up. So I wanted to
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: be Smokey Robinson. That was always my life goal to
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: be a songwriter. Smokey or the Motown crew, all of them,
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: they had a bunch of them.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: That was my idol.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: So even when they left Detroit, we went out there
• 2:43
  Speaker 1: still trying to be carry the Motown flag. So that's
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: who George Clinton was all his life, wanting to find
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: a way to get a spaceship to get off the planet.
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: What did cutting head teach you about people that later
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: helped you just understand audiences?
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: The barbershop, you had like five or six barbers in there.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: of all different generations and styles, the older guys. So
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: you had wisdom and you had bullshit. You had pimps, prostitutes, preachers, players,
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: everybody in the barbershop talking game. So you had a
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: chance to pick from whatever style that fit the situation.
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: I learned that over the years, all the different variations
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: of choices I could make. I could picture any one
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: of those barbers and say, So-and-so would do it like this.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: So-and-so would look at it like this. So-and-so would even
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: give it a thought. You know, it teaches you a
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: lot about the style of communication. You know, because there
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: ain't nothing but bullshit in the Bible. But it's information.
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: It's good bullshit.
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: Good bullshit. I mean, the preacher, the politician, and the pimp,
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: to me, all of them had game. That's right.
• 3:58
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: You can learn from all of them. You can learn
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: from all of them. And they had styles of it.
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: So when you got situations later on in life, I
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: could look at any one of those guys and say,
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: one of those, he would have looked at it like this.
• 4:10
  Speaker 1: He would have looked at it like that. So I'm
• 4:12
  Speaker 1: a picker style. I ain't married to none of the styles.
• 4:15
  Speaker 1: And same way about music. When the music changed, I
• 4:18
  Speaker 1: love doo-wop. I love Motown. But I can see when
• 4:22
  Speaker 1: it's getting ready to change. When kids start doing music,
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: they get on my nerve. I know that's the new shit.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: I was going to say what was the indicator, but
• 4:29
  Speaker 3: there it was. That's the new shit. That's the new shit.
• 4:32
  Speaker 1: When they get on your nerve, either you're going to
• 4:35
  Speaker 1: get old or you're going to get in the game.
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: And that's that. I've looked at that. You know, it
• 4:41
  Speaker 1: was funny at first, but then as I got older,
• 4:44
  Speaker 1: that's really some real thing.
• 4:45
  Speaker 2: You know.
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: So you'll see me with really young kids because that
• 4:50
  Speaker 1: keeps me cool. They got ambition.
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: And nobody my age want to listen no more. So
• 4:56
  Speaker 1: I ain't trying to deal with them. They ain't going
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: to dance. They ain't going to buy no records.
• 4:59
  Speaker 2: I love them.
• 5:01
  Speaker 1: But I got to cater to the ones that's going
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: to be out here buying records and dancing.
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: That's so interesting because I never seen you and thought
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: that you was trying to follow any trends. No, I don't.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: But I follow them, but I follow them ahead of time.
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: I follow them before they get big. I can see
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: them getting big. And I help them out to help
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: them get there. So when they get there, I get
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: there with them. I mean, when hip-hop started, the first
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: thing I realized, they need samples.
• 5:27
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: I did a record called Sample, some of this and
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: some of that. Five copies, five versions. And most of
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: the producers will tell you, like AI, they ain't going
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: to tell you that they do it. But they used
• 5:40
  Speaker 1: the samples. And a lot of them, glad that they
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: used them, because those are the people that we became
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: friends with. I worked with Snoop and them all the
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: time for samples and live in person. So when I
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: see it happening, I jump right on it before it
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: actually get there.
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: Damn.
• 5:56
  Speaker 4: I saw that you guys were... among the most sampled
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: music acts in history. Like, people literally say that about
• 6:02
  Speaker 4: you guys, right?
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: I made sure. When I realized that's what they needed,
• 6:06
  Speaker 1: I made myself available for it. Plus, it kept me alive.
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: It gave me something to do. And then I start
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: sampling them. I sample them when they sample me. I
• 6:16
  Speaker 1: sample that record.
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: That's just so crazy, though, for you to just... I mean,
• 6:19
  Speaker 3: because some.
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: I think what a lot of artists, like you said,
• 6:22
  Speaker 4: when times change, they kind of, like, resist it.
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: But for you to think that far ahead, just knowingly, right? Like, because.
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: Now the music lasts forever, like Atomic Dog and different things, right?
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you get that kind of music. I mean, if
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: I was going to be in love, it would have
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: been due up in Motown. I wouldn't have never left
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: Motown if they hadn't have left Detroit. To me, that
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: still is the best music ever. But I do realize
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: when it changed, I ain't married to this. And if
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: you do it ahead of time, you actually can be
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: a part of it. You don't have to look like
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: you're copying it. As a matter of fact, you get
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: out ahead of it, And they still look like they're
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: copying you.
• 7:00
  Speaker 3: What were people saying to you back then, though?
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: Because you weren't, like, there were people that were taking, like,
• 7:04
  Speaker 4: different hip-hop producers or whatever to court and trying to
• 7:06
  Speaker 4: get money and fighting back against that. And you were
• 7:08
  Speaker 4: doing the exact opposite. So what were your peers saying
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: to you who maybe didn't understand what you understood at
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: that time?
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: That's my sample.
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: That's how I reckon.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: You're just fighting to figure out how you're going to
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: get paid. There wasn't no laws yet.
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 7:21
  Speaker 1: You know, so you had to just do it and
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: they'll figure it out later. But a lot of people
• 7:26
  Speaker 1: didn't want it to happen. A lot of people don't
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: sample my stuff. You know, don't sample. I'm like, no,
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: this is what's happening. When the kids are doing it,
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: and it's sufficiently getting on your nerve, and especially when
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: you start finding yourself liking it. You know, when I
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: first heard Rock Kim, I'm like, I don't care what
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: I thought before. I'm loving this. But I already was
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: safe because I liked it in any way. I didn't
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: have to like it because our sample was in there.
• 7:50
  Speaker 1: I liked it for what he was doing with it.
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: When I saw the possibilities... of what could be done
• 7:55
  Speaker 1: with it. Then I say, oh, I go in there,
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: I move the horns out the way, and I move
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: the voices out the way, and I make a rep
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: called sample some of this and some of that. And
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: we figure out how I get paid later. I'm still
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: trying to figure that out. But it's coming. Like you say, legends,
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: that's the kind of shit it brings about because I'm
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: cool with everybody. We don't know why, but we all cool.
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: But now it's time to figure out what do we do,
• 8:23
  Speaker 1: how do we do it in this world. My family,
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: it's the legacy.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: That's how you do it.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: You get it together for that. I had my fun.
• 8:30
  Speaker 1: I clowned. I did what rock and roll people do.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: I partied. I acted fool. Did all of that. But
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: now it's time to clean that up. But the sampling
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: and all of that, I think I maintained that relationship
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: with all the new things that's going on.
• 8:45
  Speaker 2: When you were young, get some water too, Brandon. When
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: you were young, did you know you were different? Or
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: did you feel like the world around you was just
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: too small for your imaginations?
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: Not too small, but it wasn't ready for us to
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: do it. But I saw Beatles do it. I saw
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: the English groups do with blues and rock and roll
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: what we weren't able to do over here. So I
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: know there was a way to do it. Soon as
• 9:11
  Speaker 1: I saw Pink Floyd doing the walls or those big productions,
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: I'm going to get a spot. some kind of prop.
• 9:19
  Speaker 1: I didn't know it was going to be a spaceship,
• 9:21
  Speaker 1: but I'm going to get something that's going to make
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: it bigger than life. I jumped subjects when I talked.
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: I worked at the Hulu factory, so I'm used to phenomenons.
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: So when I look at stuff, I look for it
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: to be the biggest it can possibly be. So when
• 9:38
  Speaker 1: we got our chance to be a star, I wanted
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: a spaceship. I was a Star Trek freak anyway. It
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: says I got to make a prop that Works like
• 9:49
  Speaker 1: Pink Floyd. Give me a spaceship. And I can take
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: care of it from there because I knew that. Nobody
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: used to see no blacks in outer space except for
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: Aurora on Star Trek.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: That was a theory I could follow through all the
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: way through. And being with a company like Casablanca, Neil Bogart,
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: who was also a promotion man, who knew how to hype.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: He had Kiss, Donna Summers. He knew how to hype records.
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: So I knew with him, the two of us, We
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: could hype this stuff off the planet because I had Bootsy, Bernie, Gary,
• 10:24
  Speaker 1: you know, all had a ton of bad musicians. So
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: I had my mini Motown. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know,
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: so I knew how to put all that stuff together
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: and where it would lead to eventually that I could bring.
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: I brought the mothership back in 99, and it's in
• 10:40
  Speaker 1: the Smithsonian now. They got a new one.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: We got a new one now.
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: We can really put the tour together now. We got
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: the mothership, and then we got to figure out where
• 10:48
  Speaker 1: we fly to. You know, we call this room the
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: Black Mothership. That's what I call this room, the Black Mothership.
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: I was wondering if that's how you did it.
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: I might bite that one.
• 10:55
  Speaker 2: I call this room the Black Mothership because of George Clinton.
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: Where did your love for spaceships come from? Did you.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: Star Trek. Okay, okay, okay.
• 11:02
  Speaker 2: Plus.
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: When I moved to Jersey in 1950. You've seen some things.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: That was all of the movies that was around. Days
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: on Mars and blah, blah. And I do remember Roswell incident. Yeah.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: When that one happened. I can remember. I was about seven,
• 11:19
  Speaker 1: eight years old. But I do remember the movie. And,
• 11:22
  Speaker 1: you know, Spaceship Land and Alien. It disappeared over the years.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: But now... I'm one of the ones that actually believed
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: that type of stuff. I'm totally convinced of that.
• 11:33
  Speaker 2: I grew up in the South, so I've seen flying
• 11:35
  Speaker 2: saucers before. I've seen them.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: I didn't see the flying saucers. I've seen the reaction
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: from it. Bootsy and I, that story's out. Bootsy and
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: I was visited by one.
• 11:45
  Speaker 2: Really?
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: Actually, light hit the car. Like Mercury.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: Where y'all was at?
• 11:49
  Speaker 1: Toronto.
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: Okay, and what happened?
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Mississauga. We riding down the street. Wasn't even getting high either.
• 11:55
  Speaker 1: That's what most people think when y'all probably high.
• 11:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: No, we came through the border so you can't get high.
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? You can't get high, but
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: you know they're going to test you coming through the border.
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: We had just come through the border.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: So that was out. I would have probably thought I
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: was high too any other time. But knowing that that's
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: where I just come through the border, that wasn't high.
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: Bootsy wasn't high. So we actually saw the light come down.
• 12:17
  Speaker 1: Out of clear daylight, like a laser, out of the clouds.
• 12:21
  Speaker 1: Hit the ground. Needless to say, we both saw it, though.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: About another five minutes, it comes down through the trees.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: We're on the country road now. And it comes down
• 12:32
  Speaker 1: through the trees and splatter like electricity, like a wire
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: hit the ground a block away. Then Then the next
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: one was in the same block we were in on
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: the opposite side of the street. One, two, third one
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: hit the car. When it hit the car, it was like,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: you know, mercury in a thermometer. You know how it
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: beads up and runs?
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: Like, you know, like oil and water. It rolled off
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: the car like that. Street lights start going out. Car lights.
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: Two car lights, because after the second car light, we
• 13:05
  Speaker 1: didn't see any more cars.
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: All the lights started going out, so we drove for
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: about three minutes because it was getting real dark. By
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: the time we get to the street I lived on,
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: the lights was on, and, you know, you could see,
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: but we didn't know what the hell happened. We sat
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: in the car for like five minutes. My granddaughter's mother
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: came out, and she was young then, said, y'all look
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: like y'all seen the ghost. We just sat there in
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: the car, and we didn't say nothing. We didn't say nothing.
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: She said, I'm going to bed. Now, think this out.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: She said she's going to bed. Now, when this first happened,
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: the weirdest thing about it was we saw this light
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: in daylight. This is daylight. And we didn't realize this
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: for another 10 to 11 years. I thought about it.
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: We saw this in daylight. Why was the streetlights going out?
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: Why was there... My daughter said, since she's going to bed,
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: that means it's 7 o'clock in the evening. We got
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: there like 9 o'clock that morning. We didn't realize that until,
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: like I said, 10 years, 11 years later. I called
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: Boots and said, what time did we get there? He said,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: we left the studio. Must have got there about 8
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: or 9 in the morning. I said, yeah, about 9
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: or 10. He said, yeah. I said, why was the
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: streetlights going out? Why was the car lights on? And
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: why was Barbarella going to bed? I ain't going to
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: say what he said, but get off this motherfucker. Man,
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: what are you trying to... Because he knew I was right.
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: There was some time. Time traveling. Time missing. There was
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: time missing that didn't even occur to us. I never
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: wanted to talk about it because you sound stupid. And
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: everybody knew we was getting high.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: I know what happened.
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: So, you know, right away, ain't nobody going to believe
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: that shit. So we never talked about it like that
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: other than, yeah, I believe in.
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: I bet you if you and Boosie did some deep hypnosis,
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: y'all would remember being abducted. Oh, I know. I believe that, too.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: Y'all got abducted. I don't even need to know that band, though.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: Y'all got abducted, and then they put y'all back together.
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure that would happen, too. But I ain't
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: trying to find out that much. If I was abducted, I.
• 15:18
  Speaker 3: Would want to know what happened.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: I don't know. What am I going to do about it?
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: It's just some anal probing. That's all they do, anal probing.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: That's what probably might have happened, too. I found out
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: this is why I got this idea.
• 15:31
  Speaker 2: Oh, Lord.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: Free your mind. Y'all crazy.
• 15:35
  Speaker 2: Free your mind and your ass will follow.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: Your ass will follow. They might have said some shit
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: like that. They might have put them notions in my mind.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: Was there ever a period when you tried to be normal?
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: And if so, did you realize no one was going
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: to work for you? It was a joke if I did.
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: No, I mean, what's normal? What's normal? I've changed styles
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: so many times that I could pick up a period
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: in my life where it might look like I tried
• 16:04
  Speaker 1: to be normal. Because after all the costumes, there was
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: a period maybe 10, 15 years ago, I started wearing
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: the suits again, started looking what most people might have
• 16:15
  Speaker 1: called normal. I knew there was a joke in it.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: That was when we went to Berkeley in Boston. They
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: gave him an award there. And the whole band, we
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: all bought suits. Went up to Harlem and bought all
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: these suits. And we looked like we was in costume.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: We were so dressed up. So I did that for
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: maybe six, eight months and did a couple of videos.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: And Cube told me, he said, man, the suits and
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: shit is cool. But man, get some costumes. He said, yeah,
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: that shit look ridiculous on y'all. So we got all costumes,
• 16:50
  Speaker 1: and here we are again, back out here. For the
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: last five years, we've been selling out, looking like the
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: old group, performing like the old group.
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: Dr.
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: Funkenstein hits the stage.
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: Oh, he hits the stage. I'll definitely hit the stage.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: Came out to Mothership in, what was it, New Orleans?
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: New Orleans Essence Festival.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah. They was scared I was going to come down
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: the stairs. See, I can bounce down them stairs easy.
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: I do the Obama down them stairs.
• 17:19
  Speaker 2: You know, we was joking, but I love the saying,
• 17:22
  Speaker 2: free your mind and your ass will follow, right? It
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: sounds funny, but it's actually a serious philosophy.
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, but I was, you know, like, back in
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: those times, like I said, the Beatles and all that knowledge,
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: information started becoming the part of rock. And so it
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: was time for us to change. We wasn't in Motown.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: They had left. So we had to change the theory
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: of the cute dancing singers with suits on. Plus, we
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: was in our 30s now. That shit only works when
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: you're in your teens and early 20s. You got to,
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: you know, for the new kids, they don't want to
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: see your old ass up there, you know, flirting with them.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: So my thing is get characters. Be a character. Characters
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: don't never get old. Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, been here
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: for all of us. You don't even identify them, like,
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: where they can get old. So we decided... Dr. Frankenstein, Starchild, Mr. Wiggles,
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: Sir Nose, all of that. Bootsy we didn't have to
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: do because his name, he was already a character being
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: a Bootsy. You know, he wanted to have another name.
• 18:21
  Speaker 1: I told him, no, Bootsy's it. You're already Bootsy. You
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: need to stay Bootsy. You're already a Bootsy. He dressed
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: like a Bootsy even before he was in the group.
• 18:30
  Speaker 1: He just looked like he should have been in the group.
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: You know, and so he was already a character. The
• 18:36
  Speaker 1: easy to make him, the glasses, the base, we just
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: designed that. So, yeah, we pretty much knew where we
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: was going by the time we got the spaceship. We
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: pretty much knew we can go and go with a
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: lot of acts. We could take the parlet, the brides,
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: and whoever else, Felipe Wynn, he left the spinners, he
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: came with us. Junie Morrison from the Ohio Players. It
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: was one nation on the groove in our mind anyway.
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: We didn't realize we was offending the current power structure,
• 19:06
  Speaker 1: you know, the people that promoted shows. Record labels, radio stations,
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: all of them. We had everybody on our side, like
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: the radio station DJs. They promoted our shows. That's how
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: we stayed close with them. We didn't have to do
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: no payola because they were the promoters. So we had
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: that locked up, and they had this radio station. They
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: had to act. They could easily go to the building
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: and say, I got this package. Let me bring it
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: into Madison Square Garden. And once we did that, we
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: had too much power. You know, because nobody couldn't tell
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: us what to do. And we didn't misuse it, but
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: as far as they were concerned, it was misused because
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: they couldn't control this. When Knee Deep came out, they
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: weren't even ready for that record to come out. They
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: were trying to get us to act right, to get
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: in line. And we actually could go to the stations
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: and say, here's the new record. And we'd give it
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: to them. They'd play it and make it.
• 20:02
  Speaker 2: Pick it.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: And the company wasn't ready for that. They wanted somebody
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: else's record to be That spot. So when we had
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: like that, I guess that's a threat. We thought it
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: was a help. We thought it was helping.
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: Y'all had a sense of independence that was disrupting the system.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's what was happening. And if anybody else tried
• 20:19
  Speaker 1: to do that, we learned that later on in life
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: that that's what it was. But we was one nation
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: in the groove. We thought we was bringing you a Motown.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: The thing is, they don't want no more Motowns.
• 20:31
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: They don't know how to get off the dance floor.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: They got five records out each week that's getting played.
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: They don't want that one no more. And we was
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: coming with that.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: What does freeing your mind mean to you now when
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: you hear that term?
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: That's grew a lot now because it could go on.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? With Elon Musk around, all
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: the possibilities they could do. I'll have to think about that.
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: I don't want to ask A.I., I don't ask them
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: kind of questions. But I've got a feeling it's much
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: different than the way I was looking at it then.
• 21:12
  Speaker 1: But it's still going to be somewhere upstairs in the Nogget,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: I hope.
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: Here you talk about disrupting the system and freeing your mind.
• 21:21
  Speaker 4: Of course, I think a lot about Prince and how
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: he was about his music career.
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: Prince.
• 21:26
  Speaker 4: And how he was about his music career and the things.
• 21:28
  Speaker 4: And I know you guys were a big inspiration and friend.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: I think I might have started somebody and stuff with
• 21:35
  Speaker 1: him because he used to call me up and come
• 21:38
  Speaker 1: and talk, you know, after the shows or anything. Anytime, like,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: just let me pick your head. And at that time,
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: I was, I don't know, I was running around there
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: with the book called Behold the Pale Horse.
• 21:50
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: I was like, I thought I had found the end
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: of the world, all the information in the world.
• 21:56
  Speaker 2: You did.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: Read that right now. You'd be like, well, God damn.
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: Read that now and look around. I had 20 to
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: 30 books, and I was giving them out. And I
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: gave them to him, and he used to quiz me
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: on that. And when I looked up, he was telling me,
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: let's go to the radio stations and have meetings. And
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: I'm like, I'm too old for that. I can't do that.
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: You can get away with it. You're a kid. You
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: can get away with going to that place. you know,
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: picketing and saying, y'all not playing black music or whatever.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: I can't do that. I can say it, but I
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: ain't going up there with you. And then he did
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: the slave thing. And I really said, Oh, you know,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: I thought, cause I'm on his label. I'm on his
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: label now. And I got a record out. He got
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: a record out. And the next thing I realized they
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: met at both of us. you know and but he
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: was right what he was saying he was right but
• 22:51
  Speaker 1: you know what do you do about that when there's
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: another trip and the dance through that one that's that's
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: a real dance coach you don't you know especially nowadays
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: i don't even talk about that kind of stuff i
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: make good music doing that and that's what you're getting
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: ready to find out i'm i don't never hype no
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: music but you will be surprised at the next batch
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: of music that come out. Why would we be surprised?
• 23:15
  Speaker 2: You've been doing this for over 50 years.
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: Okay, no, but if I say that, I don't usually
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: say that. You see this right here? Yeah.
• 23:22
  Speaker 2: Parliament, The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein turns 50 years this week.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Is that something, man?
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: What do you think when you see this?
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: Damn, that sounded like two weeks ago. 50 years. When
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: you see this, what do you think about it? It worked.
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: That whole thing, cloning... cloning, the mothership, the pyramids, and
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: I don't know where the hell that shit came from.
• 23:46
  Speaker 1: It just came through me like you're talking about off
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: the top of your head. I mean, I read it
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: somewhere probably, but just like freestyling and I'm all that.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: It worked good. I had to go back and read
• 23:59
  Speaker 1: up on what I said because all I did was
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: read the back of a book and say cloning and
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: what they could do. And I just went through the
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: possibilities if that's the case. the possibilities of what you
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: could do with it. And that's what the stories was.
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: And now that I see that, that's what they did
• 24:15
  Speaker 1: with it. That's pretty much what it is. Through your mind,
• 24:19
  Speaker 1: your ass will fall. It takes on another meaning. I
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: don't know if I was not only in touch at
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: that time with Mimbusi, but did somebody sneak in my
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: head the other time? You're getting downloads. Because a lot
• 24:31
  Speaker 1: of shit that I said, I don't know damn about it,
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: other than what I read and I can deduce how
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: to make a song out of it. The same way
• 24:39
  Speaker 1: I'm doing that when I did computer games. I pretty
• 24:42
  Speaker 1: much knew that pretty soon it's going to be computer situations.
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: And here we are.
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: We're here now.
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: And I made records 30 years ago about that. You know,
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: I ain't got no fear of it. I love it.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: I can dance with everybody all day.
• 24:57
  Speaker 2: That's right. You know, everybody talks about Afrofuturism now, right?
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: That's what's happening.
• 25:01
  Speaker 2: But I looked at you. Like you said, you've been
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: putting black people in spaceships. For decades. Like, why was
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: it important?
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: Sun Ra, Pharoah Saunders, all the jazz musicians, they say
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: far out, but there's some undercurrent tones when you talk
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: like that. There's things being said. So, like I say,
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: Sun Ra, all of those people had something to say
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: about that concept. Jimi Hendrix, to me, was that. That
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: was not from this planet.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah.
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: I think Prince too. Prince definitely. Prince just made it
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: look like a commercial, but he was not. He could
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: do all of it. Not only that, he could dance.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: I mean, the epitome of rock star is what Prince was.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: He had the look, the dance. When you hear him
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: play a George Harrison song, ain't nobody playing no guitar
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: like that. Had the pants with his cheeks out. Okay,
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: he can do it. Androgynous, whatever he did, whatever he
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: wanted to do. And he was still mild-mannered. The only
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: thing he couldn't do, he'd say, was walk out into
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: the audience like I could do. And everybody was cool
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: with it. You can't stand still. You can do it.
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: You can walk, but don't let them get you there
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: where everybody's autographed. I'd do it all day long.
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: You know, I've seen Prince float before. Huh?
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: I've seen him float. Prince was at the old radio
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: station we was at. Levitate.
• 26:22
  Speaker 2: He came in the building. It was like five in
• 26:24
  Speaker 2: the morning. He was there with two old white ladies.
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: I don't even know what he was there for. And
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: he was in the hallway and he came and he
• 26:30
  Speaker 2: spoke to us and everything. We asked him to take
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: a picture. He said, no, he didn't want to take
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: a picture. But when he walked away, he was floating.
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: I took the picture. You're not going to believe this.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: I took the picture.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: You took a picture?
• 26:39
  Speaker 1: I shouldn't have did it, but I took it when
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: he was walking away. Right.
• 26:42
  Speaker 2: And I'm like, Yo, look, he's levitating. Everybody in the
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: room saw the picture. And no less than 30 seconds later,
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: where the picture was in my phone, it.
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: Was just a black box.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: Oh, shit.
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: That's deep. But you know who else did that?
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: Ali.
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: Ali could do magic and just rise right up. And
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: you could put someone on this.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: He would do that.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: We sent it at the desk at the hotel. We
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: did it for a bunch of people. We sent it.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: And somebody was teaching him some magic tricks. He used
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: to float like a butterfly for real. He just raised
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: right up off the floor. Muhammad Ali.
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, doing it.
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: And magic tricks, too. He was studying magic with somebody. Wow. Yeah,
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: a lot of people have seen it.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: Why was it important for you to show us controlling
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: the universe?
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: Controlling the universe?
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: That's how I felt when I used to see us
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: in the spaceships, especially during that time because.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: It was a time... I don't know what.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: My thing is, I don't have no concept of what
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: I call myself doing other than making records. And making
• 27:41
  Speaker 1: records and making people dance, shake their booty. That's hard
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: for me to believe, Mr.
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: Kelly.
• 27:46
  Speaker 1: No, I'm saying for me, that's what it was. The
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: image was too intentional. I'm questioning it myself now because
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: it seemed like I did do more than what I
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: thought I was doing.
• 27:56
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 27:56
  Speaker 1: To me, I felt safe for being the joke that
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: I'm just making records. That other shit, I don't want
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: to be responsible for that shit. You know, I mean,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: I love it. I like what it's saying.
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: But it was heavy at the time.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: I'm still ready to party. If you got it like
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: that and you think about that, you got to be
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: ready for other things.
• 28:16
  Speaker 3: You know what's crazy, though?
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: I feel like during the time that y'all were making
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: these songs, though, there was, like, such a movement behind
• 28:22
  Speaker 4: black people's art. And I think that's where Charlamagne is
• 28:25
  Speaker 4: coming from. But you were just looking at it as, like,
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: a release. Like, my people need this. Like, we need
• 28:30
  Speaker 4: to be able to get on a spaceship and.
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: Get out of here. And I really believe that we
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: like that.
• 28:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: I mean, I've already believed that. But it was so
• 28:37
  Speaker 1: natural with that. There wasn't no boast. There's just something
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: I believe. But in that sense, no. Rock and roll
• 28:43
  Speaker 1: and blues, I remember when that was my mother and
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: my father. But the fact that by the time we
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: got big, it was England and all of that. I mean,
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: I ain't mad at them. It's good. They're supposed to
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: do it. It took Eric Clapton to make me know
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: that I hadn't paid enough attention to Robert Johnson.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: I knew the.
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: Record, but I didn't know how good that was when
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: I saw how much respect he gave Robert Johnson. Then
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: I realized we wasn't doing that for our musicians here.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: So when I started doing the blues and funk songs,
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: I made them real dramatic. You know, like Maggie Brain,
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: that's like blues that you can get with no bass
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: and no drums. I made it black, blacker than black,
• 29:32
  Speaker 1: because I had to catch up from what I had
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: missed by not paying attention to, say, the Robert Johnsons
• 29:38
  Speaker 1: and the fact that now blues sounds like a European music. Yeah.
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: We gave that away because we don't hold on to
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: our artists. Once they get two or three years old,
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: we're going to another one. And they're out to pasture.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: We don't have too many classics. They used to do
• 29:56
  Speaker 1: it with jazz.
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 29:58
  Speaker 1: But they don't even do it with jazz anymore. But
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: we're doing it now because we're bringing it back in.
• 30:04
  Speaker 1: We're saying Afrofuturism, black and proud. We're actually saying that.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: And other people are saying it for us.
• 30:10
  Speaker 2: And we're trying to preserve culture.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: And we're trying to preserve culture.
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: Like, you got to hold, at least for hip-hop, you
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: got to hold the Snoops up in high regard.
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: You got to hold the Jay-Z's up. You got to
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: hold the Nas' up. You got to hold all of them.
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: You got to hold the Kanye's up. You got to
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: hold all of them up. The 50s, all these old dogs.
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: You got to hold them up. And the ones that's
• 30:24
  Speaker 1: doing it, they doing it all to me. Ain't no...
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: From Eminem, he was 14, 15. He's been bad like that.
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: I was the one saying that before anybody had the
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: nerve to say it. My kids and people around me
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: were saying, he was cool. But after a while, everybody's
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: beginning to realize, no, he ain't just cool.
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: He's a monster. Motherfucker.
• 30:49
  Speaker 1: And everybody agrees. You can say that without any thought
• 30:52
  Speaker 1: about it. But you have to do that for the culture,
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: for the music itself, because he's doing the music. He
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: was with us right from the beginning.
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 31:02
  Speaker 1: Right in Detroit. We recorded the same place, same people,
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: and everything. You know? Just, you know, different paths. You know,
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: I was doing what I was doing. It wasn't the time.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: You know, but I knew all the time, and I
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: always said, him and Rakim was my.
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: For rapping, I mean, there's a lot of great rappers.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: A lot of them. But that was the beginning and
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: end for me early in the game. Why those two?
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: Because that's two different generations, too. Why those two? I
• 31:27
  Speaker 1: don't know. Just what Rakim did right from the beginning.
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: And Eminem has been for a long time. It was
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: all the way back then, all the way through to now.
• 31:35
  Speaker 1: He's maintained what I thought he was going to do. Anyway,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: I didn't realize he was going to be able to
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: handle the politics. because that's a hell of a road
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: where he had to come through. But the fact that
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: they in a beautiful, him, Dre, 50 Cent, people don't
• 31:51
  Speaker 1: realize the connection, all that had to take place for
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: that to happen. The industry was not smiling at that.
• 32:00
  Speaker 1: They had to be very scared of what they might,
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: But they're all nice, and they all remain friends. Hard
• 32:07
  Speaker 1: to do in this business. They make sure you're not friends.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: They make sure you mess up once, do something to
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: one or the other, that they fall out with you.
• 32:17
  Speaker 1: It's hard to do that.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: Why is that the industry fault?
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Because that's what they do. They make sure you don't
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: have that kind of connection with each other and stay
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: that way. And they have a friendship that survives a
• 32:29
  Speaker 1: few things that I've seen them go through. That was
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: a lot of politicking in that.
• 32:35
  Speaker 2: So how do you avoid that as a black person?
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: How do you avoid the politics?
• 32:38
  Speaker 1: Play crazy. Play crazy. You know, I ain't lying. I mean,
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: people know I got high. But I never got high
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: as I pretended to be.
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: Man, cut it out, man.
• 32:56
  Speaker 1: All the stories said you was like a rocker for real.
• 32:58
  Speaker 2: I'd still be here. You might be right. They used
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: to tell me, I'm just saying what they used to say.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: They said you used to hide crack in the studio
• 33:04
  Speaker 2: ceiling and stuff. I know. I'm a number one.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: You don't hide crack. You don't hide crack. You look
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: for it. You might look for it up there. You
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: hide it up there. I swear somebody told me that.
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: I was in the studio one day and somebody said, man,
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: George Clinton used to record in here and he used to.
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: Hide his track in his cell. I might have thought
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: I put it up there, you know, because that's the thing.
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: And I ain't never been afraid to say that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 33:27
  Speaker 1: Because that's part of my thing. I went through that.
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: Part of your journey, yeah. But I'm here, happy. I
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: ain't mad at that either. That's right. That's part of
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: the thing. I made that decision. And when you do that,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: you start up and then, man, whether you drinking, smoking, whatever,
• 33:44
  Speaker 1: I'm going to get fucked up tonight.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: And if you succeed, you got fucked up. You did
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: fucked up shit. So all of those things go together.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: But the minute you can admit it, and that was
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: part of my journey, I said, oh, I ain't mad
• 33:58
  Speaker 1: at it. I ain't doing it no more. I ain't
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: mad at nobody else doing it. I ain't going to
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: leave my shit around you. But I ain't mad at it.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: I can dig it.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: Because everybody have their version of that. That's right. I mean, everybody,
• 34:10
  Speaker 1: whatever area you're in, It's going to be, we call
• 34:14
  Speaker 1: it trendy chemical substance. Whatever's trending. It's going to be
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: out there for you. And you got to dance with it. Now,
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: once it's over, I ain't guilty.
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: I'm looking at.
• 34:27
  Speaker 1: I'm having fun looking at the places that I didn't
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: recognize because I was under the influence. I'm like, damn,
• 34:33
  Speaker 1: all I've been doing when I was under the influence,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: I'm seeing this place for the first time.
• 34:37
  Speaker 3: So that's how you're walking through New York today.
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: You're like, wow. Wow, I didn't remember this. And I
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: ain't afraid to say because... Only thing I relate to
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: when I was coming through was where was some baking
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: soda or where was some, you know, I related to
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: it like that. And that ain't nothing to be ashamed of.
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: That's over with.
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: You used the cookies yourself? Shit.
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: I mean, I ain't gonna, I don't want to give
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: you no.
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: You're not a cook.
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: Mr. Clinton, you're not a cook. I have a microwave.
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: I don't believe you.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying? I had a microwave. You
• 35:12
  Speaker 1: don't do that. That's like putting chitlins in the microwave.
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: You used to cook it in the microwave? I ain't
• 35:16
  Speaker 1: going to get that far.
• 35:20
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: Now let me ask you a question. Did the mothership
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: represent escape from America?
• 35:28
  Speaker 2: I think we came here on one.
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: I think man came here from someplace else. Not just
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: something that Take this to get off of it. I
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: think we came here. I don't think this was the
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: first for biology, DNA, and all that. I think like
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: we're getting ready to do now, it's been done, oh, man,
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: I think it's been done thousands of times. I think
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: there have been thousands of civilizations on this planet.
• 35:54
  Speaker 2: That's a fact.
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: Because they got buildings here that nobody can take credit for.
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: even knowing how they got here. The technology is nowhere near.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: We're just getting to that point that we can do
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: it again. I mean, yeah, we came here on spaceships.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: I think the pyramids, I think they were built. Launch
• 36:13
  Speaker 1: pads and shit, landing things. But something is under that thing.
• 36:17
  Speaker 2: Got to be, right? Yeah.
• 36:19
  Speaker 1: I think they were built by giants. Oh, I believe
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: that too. They got the giant, they got skeletons of
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: the giant, different giant. Peru, they got 20 feet tall
• 36:29
  Speaker 1: giant fish. Yeah, that's all kind of biological things that
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: might look like science fiction. I think a lot of
• 36:36
  Speaker 1: that stuff has.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: They got them in Peru? I know they had the
• 36:38
  Speaker 2: skeleton in Peru.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: They got giant skeletons in Peru.
• 36:40
  Speaker 2: They must have showed you that. They ain't show it
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: to me.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: But, I mean, that's where you can get AI. I'll
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: tell you that one.
• 36:46
  Speaker 2: You ever been to Peru? Yeah, we played there a
• 36:48
  Speaker 2: couple of times. I don't know.
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: I can't remember where.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah. They say that Coke.
• 36:53
  Speaker 1: They ain't got no Peruvian. I know you're talking about that.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: They ain't got no Peruvian plate. I can see it
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: on his face over here. Peruvian plate. No, you can't
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: make crack out of that. You can't.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: No.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: That's too expensive. You don't play with that one. No,
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: that's for the people, the classical people with the little...
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: The little bourgeois... Little pinky guy. The little pinky guy.
• 37:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 37:21
  Speaker 1: That was that type of guy. I wanted, when you
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: imagined black people in the future. I know I'm running
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: my mouth. They always tell me, what are you doing?
• 37:29
  Speaker 2: Let Mr.
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: Clinton talk, man. He having a good time. Get off
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: that subject.
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: Let Mr.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: Clinton talk. I'm glad my wife ain't here. She's been
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: telling us all the time. She's been telling us all
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: the time.
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: Am I cool?
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, then, because they told to watch me. I run
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: my mouth, because I ain't got nothing to be ashamed about.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: When you imagine black people in the future, right, like
• 37:54
  Speaker 2: back then, what did you believe, I guess we had
• 37:58
  Speaker 2: to leave behind in order to get where we are now?
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Man, but, you know, when I look at pictures like
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: the Moore's, Sidney Poitier in The Long Ships. You know,
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: when I seen what we might have been in control
• 38:16
  Speaker 1: of in past times, there's a whole lot. We've been
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: that kingly emperor all over the planet. So we that.
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: Ali came back saying that I didn't know what he
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: was talking about. We kings. But he had seen it.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: He went out there and seen it. Same with Malcolm.
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: When I didn't see the world, you start seeing a
• 38:43
  Speaker 1: whole lot of things that we hadn't done over the years.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: And once we got on the road, we saw the
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: same thing. I never thought we'd actually see a Russia.
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: We actually played in Moscow.
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: 10 years ago? 15 years ago? Yeah.
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: And I'm over there. Now, the kids, they don't know. Like,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: I'm from the 50s. I know when there was communism
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: and The whole thing. But now we over here, they
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: got a McDonald's right in front of Lennon's building. He
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: would have turned over. They don't know what I'm talking about.
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: I'm like a capitalist, a McDonald's right in red square.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: I'm laughing my ass off. But then the same while
• 39:28
  Speaker 1: we over there, what's his name? Snowden. got busted at
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: the airport while we was coming in.
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: What?
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: We couldn't even get in. They had him at the
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: airport when we was coming in. And that's the period
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: that we was over there doing. I bought them all
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: Russian hats. We all dressed up like Russians. And it
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: was cool to go. You could go over there legally.
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: It wasn't long after that, it started getting like I
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: knew it to be.
• 39:50
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 39:51
  Speaker 1: And it's like that now. But all those different places,
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: you see blacks been here, been there. I saw a
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: black Jesus in Russia.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: Black Jesus.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they had a picture. Somebody had a Black Jesus picture.
• 40:04
  Speaker 1: You know, they try to show you the stuff that
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: they won't show you over here. They're going to show
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: you something.
• 40:10
  Speaker 3: That wasn't your first time seeing a Black Jesus, was it?
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: No, it wasn't. But I mean, once you start seeing
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: it coming from that side.
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: Right, you're like, oh, okay, wow.
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: You know, it's easy for one of us to just,
• 40:20
  Speaker 1: paint a black Jesus. But you don't know. I believed
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: it in the first place. You live in that part
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: of the world and don't be black. That's pretty hot
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: not to be black. Does the future look like you
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: imagined it?
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: Like right now? Yeah.
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: And it's on time too because they're talking about in
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: the next five to ten years there ain't going to
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: be no thing going off planet to go to work Yeah.
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: In the next five years. I mean, they must have
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: already started. They got ships going up every day, dropping
• 40:57
  Speaker 1: stuff off. I'm like, where they dropping it off at?
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: They got space stations and everything. So, no, this right
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: on time is about 30-something people. They're going to start
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: entertaining the thought of not dying.
• 41:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they said if you live till, I think it's 2036. 2030.
• 41:17
  Speaker 1: It's 2030?
• 41:18
  Speaker 2: 2030.
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: But I'd give it to 2035. Because they got the nanotechnology. Nanotech.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah, nanotechnology.
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: Unless you just, like, downright kill yourself, they'll be able
• 41:30
  Speaker 1: to save you from almost anything.
• 41:31
  Speaker 2: Would you want that?
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: I ain't got no problem with it if I'm alive.
• 41:36
  Speaker 2: What's your name?
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: I got a pacemaker. I do want to live long.
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: I want to live to be 101. Pacemakers, to me,
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: is like, like false teeth. You're going to have false
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: everything if your ass can stay here and program to
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: like it. It'll be part robot. And like it.
• 41:52
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: You're going to be able to program yourself to like it.
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: It'll become your normal.
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: It's going to be so normal. It's weird to us
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: because we start, what you call it, we in our feelings.
• 42:04
  Speaker 1: That's one that's getting me to catch hell.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: But what about your next journey? Like, I want to
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: live to be 101 and then go on to the
• 42:09
  Speaker 2: next journey.
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: I want to be there with you.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: I'm being that way too. Doing something funky. Yeah. And
• 42:16
  Speaker 1: there's always going to be some room for some funk.
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: There's always going to be somebody that want to shake
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: their booty. Even the computer got to boot up. That's right.
• 42:27
  Speaker 1: That's right. That's right. That's right.
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: Go right on ahead.
• 42:34
  Speaker 1: Keep going.
• 42:34
  Speaker 3: I ain't mad at you.
• 42:37
  Speaker 2: Yes. You know, you've always talked about ownership of your music, right? Like,
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: when did you first realize that creating something and owning
• 42:48
  Speaker 2: what you created were two different things? Damn.
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: You're saying when did that happen?
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: Yeah, when did you first realize that, that creating something
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: and owning what you created were two different things?
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: Probably in the 80s, probably. Probably around the 80s. And
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: it just grows from there.
• 43:10
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: When you see how it's designed, even when you start
• 43:14
  Speaker 1: to find out what to do, that it starts changing,
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: so you can't do that. Even all the copyright things,
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: you knew it should be that way, but nobody knew
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: how it really worked until in the 80s, 85s, they
• 43:27
  Speaker 1: start talking about copyright recaptures and stuff like that. Then
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: you start realizing that is a reality. You know, especially
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: when I heard... Elvis Presley's wife got their stuff back.
• 43:40
  Speaker 1: John Lennon's wife got his stuff back. But nobody else,
• 43:44
  Speaker 1: it seemed like impossible to get back. They make you
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: think it's impossible for you to get it back. Under
• 43:49
  Speaker 1: all circumstances. But it's not. You have to dance like hell.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: Because they change the rules as soon as you find
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: out what it is. They change the rules again. And
• 44:00
  Speaker 1: you're still chasing. And that's You know, it's working out.
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: I make sure I'm going to be here. I ain't
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: going nowhere. That's my thing is I know that I
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: was expected to be dead by now, so I wouldn't
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: have to deal with it. Nobody wouldn't have to deal
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: with it. I ain't going nowhere. I'm going to be stubborn.
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: That's right. Matter of fact, I'm coming, like I said,
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: the next batch of shit, you're going to remember I
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: said it. You're going to remember I said it. I
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: can't wait to hear it. Believe you me. But hit
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: or not, you're going to know it is the shit. Mm-hmm.
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: It's like that.
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: Well, you're being honored in Newark, New Jersey.
• 44:37
  Speaker 1: That's home, too. That's where I started the group. That's
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: why that's so fun. I remember practicing in the playground, doo-wopping.
• 44:45
  Speaker 1: I've been there a couple of times lately. Matter of fact,
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: one of the principal's husband is a Q. We have
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: big fun with Atomic Dog when we get there.
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's the Q anthem right there. Oh,
• 44:59
  Speaker 2: my God.
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: They made me honorary. And Ben Crump is like my
• 45:04
  Speaker 1: honorary brother, and he's my lawyer. So we've been all
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: over the place doing shit.
• 45:11
  Speaker 2: What is an atomic dog? Like when you made that song,
• 45:14
  Speaker 2: what was you trying to say? I don't know.
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: I have no idea. But you know, I knew that
• 45:21
  Speaker 1: I had to have a hit record. And the dog...
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: Always seemed to work. Do the dog, walk the dog.
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: It always got shit going. But since I was in
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: the computer thing now, I feel like, you know, that
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: I could do another dog song and it would work.
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: And I remember saying, hey, lady, won't you be my
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: dog and I'll be your treat and you can pee
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: on me. I thought that was cute. Then my granddaughter said, granddad.
• 45:50
  Speaker 1: And she was like seven or eight. girl dogs don't
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: pee on trees.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: Damn!
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: And I felt like, damn. I had gotten away with
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: it for like 10 years. Nobody said that. Then all
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: of a sudden, now I got to flip it.
• 46:03
  Speaker 2: I'm going to be honest with you. I didn't know
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: that either. Girl dogs don't pee on trees?
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: You don't think of it like... I never thought about it.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: You don't ever think of it like... But it turned out,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: she just said it like.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: And.
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: Girl dogs don't pee on trees.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: God damn.
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: You feel like, don't tell nobody. Let me tell them.
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: Let me tell them. Let me let them think. I
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: didn't know girl dogs don't pee on trees. Girl dogs
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: don't pee on trees. How the hell you knew that?
• 46:25
  Speaker 2: How you find out?
• 46:27
  Speaker 3: I just read a book in school.
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: They squat.
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: They squat. Girl dogs squat. Girl dogs.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: I swear I ain't never thought about that in my life.
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: And that's how those things go.
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: When you go to like the HBCU campuses and you
• 46:39
  Speaker 4: see them like.
• 46:41
  Speaker 1: I have them.
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: Like, you're like, I mean, you already are forever embedded
• 46:43
  Speaker 4: in the culture, but, like, that is such a song
• 46:46
  Speaker 4: that is synonymous with, like, the yard and the Greeks.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: And just the joy of HBCUs. When it first came out,
• 46:52
  Speaker 1: and we already was big in D.C., you know, with
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: Chocolate City, the whole thing. When it first came out,
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: they hired us to come to play at Howard. And
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: that's where the Qs were put together at. Now, we
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: had no idea about fraternity or Q dolls or nothing.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: I landed at the airport. These guys come out to
• 47:13
  Speaker 1: the airplane to pick me up as I got off
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: the airplane.
• 47:16
  Speaker 3: In the purple and gold?
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I'm thinking it's the football team. Because we're going
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: to Harvard. I think it's football. So I go there
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: all day hanging with these guys. And they're doing their thing.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: And I don't say nothing of it. We do the show.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: And over the next few years, Q-Dogs, they're on stage. Oh,
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: and they like Atomic Dog. And they made it their
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: thing forever.
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: It took me.
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: Years to realize that that day I went to Howard,
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: they picked me up at the airport. They had chose
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: the song then. Were you with this?
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: 1982. 83. 1983.
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: The song had just come in in 82. The beginning
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: of 83, yeah. They had me out there, and then
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: I realized, that's what that was. And they would always
• 48:04
  Speaker 1: come on stage doing it.
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: But the song before that was Can You Get To That.
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: That was their theme song. That's a Funkadelics record. I
• 48:16
  Speaker 1: had no idea they'd been like that for years. But
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: once they got on to it, they could be getting
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: their teeth pulled. The song come on, they jumping up here.
• 48:28
  Speaker 2: What scares an 85-year-old George Clinton that wouldn't have scared
• 48:31
  Speaker 2: a 35-year-old George Clinton?
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: Almost everything. You said what scares an 85-year-old?
• 48:38
  Speaker 2: What scares you now that wouldn't have scared you when
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: you was 35? Just shit.
• 48:44
  Speaker 1: Just simply hang it out. Just go visit and people
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: scare me.
• 48:49
  Speaker 2: Now. Yeah.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: You know, especially when things getting good, things be getting good.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: That's when I get scared the most. You know, happy,
• 48:58
  Speaker 1: don't hang around.
• 48:59
  Speaker 2: I mean, minus the bullshit, things been good pretty much
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: your whole life.
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I try to dance, you know.
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: I'm thankful for that. And I don't push it. You know,
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: I take less chances dancing. I'll be all over this
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: town running around. I'm 85, so I ain't going to
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: be able to do all that much running. I got
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: a scooter out there. I'll scoot all around this motherfucker.
• 49:19
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's real, right?
• 49:21
  Speaker 2: Because when you did live wild back in the day,
• 49:24
  Speaker 2: you lived long.
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: Even then, I was pretty mild, man. Like I said,
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: my image... preceded me. And I did it on purpose
• 49:32
  Speaker 1: because I had less people, you know, in your face talking.
• 49:36
  Speaker 3: It was a protection thing or was it a music
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: selling thing?
• 49:38
  Speaker 1: It was a protection. I'm pretty much shy other than like,
• 49:43
  Speaker 1: I can run my mouth. Before, I was just going
• 49:45
  Speaker 1: out and being all, I can do that on stage,
• 49:48
  Speaker 1: but that ain't me. I'm going in the motherfucker when
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: I get old. I'm going fishing. I'm going to smoke
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: some weed all day long. That's good. I'm going to
• 49:57
  Speaker 1: do that all day long, but other than that, I
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: paint now, too. Oh, I got a good painting career.
• 50:02
  Speaker 2: Okay, okay.
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: I saw you got something. I got one in the Louvre.
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I saw it.
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: So that's some big shit that I could, it helps
• 50:08
  Speaker 1: me spend that time that I usually spend doing nothing.
• 50:13
  Speaker 1: But now, that helps you when you're doing nothing to do.
• 50:18
  Speaker 1: When I found out you could, I could sell my
• 50:20
  Speaker 1: handwriting or something. Shit, that legend shit must have something
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, but as long
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: as I can keep the vibe of it being funny.
• 50:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 50:32
  Speaker 1: You know, like somebody said, how do you handle, you know,
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: the praise and all that? To me, it's funny, but
• 50:38
  Speaker 1: I tell myself, you great, I'll do that in the bathroom.
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: I go in the bathroom and say, you a bad motherfucker.
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: In the mirror, you did this, you did that, and
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: flush the toilet and leave it. When I come out,
• 50:50
  Speaker 1: you ain't shit. That's me to myself. Because there's somebody
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: in the corner saying, you ain't shit. There's always going
• 50:58
  Speaker 1: to be somebody who don't give a fuck.
• 51:02
  Speaker 2: But that's why sometimes you got to wipe your ass
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: and then smell the tissue. Just to know your shit
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: stink like everybody else.
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: I'm convinced of it already.
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: I don't believe it, though.
• 51:12
  Speaker 3: This is a crazy combo.
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: Like I said, y'all represent alcohol good at this event.
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: Where do we eat at? Hey, anybody got a name?
• 51:30
  Speaker 2: New York.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: Somebody got some pre-rolls in them?
• 51:32
  Speaker 2: I got edibles. I got mine.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: You like edibles?
• 51:34
  Speaker 2: Huh?
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: You like edibles? No, I don't like edibles. That's for grown-ups.
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: That should wear me out. I just like to be
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: just hot. I ain't trying to get fucked up no more.
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: That's something 85 don't do too often, trying to get
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: fucked up. Just get high and enjoy it. That's right.
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: When you got to, you know, you're 85, you've seen
• 51:55
  Speaker 2: a lot of your peers, you know, transition, right? Does
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: it make you think about them?
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: Hell yeah, it do. Every time you turn around, another
• 52:01
  Speaker 1: one that was one but a few feet away from you. Yeah,
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: that shit make you think about it. But is it
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: fear or curiosity?
• 52:07
  Speaker 2: Like, damn, it's like.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: I ain't even trying to find out what it is.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: It's just it's too close to me right now. LAUGHTER
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: You said it too close to you. I was just
• 52:21
  Speaker 1: with him. Just talk to him and all that. Yeah,
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: it's like that. Because, you know, that's the area and
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: the time-wise. But I'm hard-headed. Like I said, I ain't going. No,
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: you're going to drag me out of here.
• 52:32
  Speaker 3: I can tell, man.
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: 85, you are so full of life and conversation and
• 52:37
  Speaker 4: memories and all the things.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: I'm glad that that's what it proved. I'm going to
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: be running my mouth in business.
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: The Rockstar Lifestyle had no impact on you.
• 52:46
  Speaker 3: You are fully here.
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: Oh, thank you.
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: Thank you. Hey, y'all, you heard that?
• 52:53
  Speaker 2: Do you think the culture does a good enough job
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: honoring architects like you while you're still here?
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: Not so much, you know, like myself. Even in the beginning,
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: when they are beginning to be stars, we have to
• 53:06
  Speaker 1: start paying attention to them. Even when they're no longer
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: the ones we'd like, but still make sure that we
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: take care of them, look after them, or whatever that is.
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: Don't just throw them to the curve because they ain't
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: on the radio no more.
• 53:19
  Speaker 4: Mm-hmm.
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: Because that really happened. A lot of stars get there
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: and bam, and then all of a sudden the new
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: one is in and you ain't shit no more. That one,
• 53:28
  Speaker 1: I think. And then when they pop up in some
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: other country, another genre, then if they get big enough,
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: then they can be black again. But if they don't
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: get big enough, they'll sell out. And you wouldn't even
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: buy any records. You don't even go to the shows.
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: But it looked like they'll sell out because they changed.
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: But all of that, I think we can do more
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: for the artists, for the legends. Hell yeah, you can
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: do more for them. I mean, my feelings was, really
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: my feelings was about Motown. Yeah. Because, I mean, that's
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: something that's supposed to be praised so thoroughly. Like I said,
• 54:08
  Speaker 1: my feelings get hurt about them not doing it either.
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: And the company and the people that was there, and
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: I can understand a lot of them were so close,
• 54:17
  Speaker 1: and they were stars, and it just disappeared. But there's
• 54:20
  Speaker 1: a reason for that. And we need to, like, readdress
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: that whole Philadelphia and all of that. You're talking about
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: Stax Records? Stax. Yeah, yeah. And Gamlin' Huff. All of
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: that was, like, the culture. And it's like, somebody will
• 54:39
  Speaker 1: come up with one of them, The Northern Soul, they
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: call it Northern Soul in London, and it'll be all Philadelphia, Illinois, Detroit, B-sides. Well,
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: we got to do that, though.
• 54:50
  Speaker 2: We got to do a better job of telling our story.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: We got to do that.
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying.
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: We got to do to find ways to honor the oldies,
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: without just being oldies but goodies, but this was classical shit.
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: That's right. It's classical.
• 55:02
  Speaker 1: I mean, those, and the artsy, farsiness of the jazz
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: and the blues, we don't cater to our... It's so
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: easy to blow somebody up on the internet. You know,
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: they get enough likes and things.
• 55:16
  Speaker 2: They blow up.
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: And that's how we determine what that is. We got
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: to start doing more live shows. We still have fun
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: doing live shows. We all up in the computer thing,
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: but we a live band. We live band and we
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: sang and played, but we definitely going to be AI
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: out because I mean, I'm waiting to be on the holodeck.
• 55:39
  Speaker 2: You want to be a hologram? You want to be
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: a hologram?
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: I bet we did that already.
• 55:43
  Speaker 2: Okay, okay.
• 55:43
  Speaker 1: We did that when it first came out. When Tupac
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: did it, we did that. We got it in case
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: when it finally do come up, we did one already.
• 55:50
  Speaker 1: But that ain't nothing. I'm talking about all of the
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: stuff that they getting ready to put out. They getting
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: ready to do. You ain't going to know what's virtual
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: and what's not in a minute. But see, I think
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: we about to have a great disconnect. I think that
• 56:01
  Speaker 1: it's going to be a lot of people who disconnect
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: from social media. Because they don't know what's real and
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: what's not real no more. What are they going to do?
• 56:07
  Speaker 1: Right here, they're going to come see you in person, live.
• 56:09
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: I mean, you're going to probably get a lot of that,
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: but you bet they have their iPhone there. Yeah. You
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: can't get away with it so much because we live
• 56:16
  Speaker 1: in it.
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: Because ain't nothing like real life, man.
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: Oh, it ain't, but... it's going to be so thorough
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: in a minute. You ain't going to be able to
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: tell the difference. You did the virtual reality porn yet? No,
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: that makes me porn. I was a porn period. No,
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: you can put it on and you can... No, I
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: don't even want to... I believe it. I don't need
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: to know. I found out from crack. I don't disagree
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: with nothing. Girl told me right in the beginning, this
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: will make you blow your house. I should listen.
• 56:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: No, no, no. No, I don't want to know about
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: the porn because I believe it worked, and I don't
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: need to be proven.
• 56:52
  Speaker 2: See, I was just going to tell you there ain't
• 56:54
  Speaker 2: nothing like the real thing is what I'm saying.
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: I wouldn't say that either because AI is going to
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: find out what the real thing is like, and it's
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: going to serve it.
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: No, ain't nothing like that real thing.
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: I don't even believe that. I'm satisfied with it.
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: I'm satisfied.
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: The real thing, at 85, what is the real thing? Oh!
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: Listen, if you ain't never had said that, we would
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: have never questioned it.
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: You know what I mean? Yeah, what's the real thing
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: at 85? What is anything at 85? You take it
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: how you get it, huh? God damn. A thought of
• 57:34
  Speaker 1: it is cool. Now, that's what you're talking about, free
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: your mind, your ass from a father. The thought of
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: getting it is enough.
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: Right. This is my last question, man. What was the
• 57:45
  Speaker 2: hardest freedom for you to actually achieve? Like, when you
• 57:49
  Speaker 2: think about your whole life, you've had freedom from drugs,
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: freedom from contracts, freedom from other people's expectations. What was
• 57:55
  Speaker 2: the hardest freedom for you to actually achieve?
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: The hardest, what you mean, not... The hardest, freedom. What's
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: a freedom?
• 58:08
  Speaker 2: I just gave you some examples. You have freedom from drugs.
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: You have freedom from contracts. Freedom from ego.
• 58:13
  Speaker 1: Freedom from other people's expectations.
• 58:17
  Speaker 3: Freedom from the real thing.
• 58:17
  Speaker 1: You see what I'm saying? Now you got freedom from
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: the real thing. Freedom. I mean, I've always said another thing.
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: Freedom is free of the need to be free. That's
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: in one of my songs. The need to be free from.
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: From what? From what?
• 58:42
  Speaker 1: Who's holding you down? What is it holding me down?
• 58:45
  Speaker 1: It's going to be me, if anything, because I determine
• 58:50
  Speaker 1: what got me locked up. It's me. I make that decision.
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: Even if somebody do something to me, it's up to
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: me to say they did something to me and I'm
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: mad about it. I can say a lot of things.
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: They crazy.
• 59:02
  Speaker 2: I shouldn't have been there.
• 59:03
  Speaker 1: I can come up with a lot of reasons why.
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: Man, that makes so much sense.
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: You can let it go.
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 59:10
  Speaker 1: It shows you have that choice.
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: Your life aligns with that.
• 59:14
  Speaker 1: That's how you are. You have a choice. You may
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: not want to make the choice, and you may not
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: want to acknowledge it. But you do. You have the choice.
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: I mean, most of that shit is mental and all
• 59:26
  Speaker 1: that shit. But, hey. If it ain't funky, I haven't
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: got a problem with it in the first place. And
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: that funk, to me, is the freedom. Funk is anything
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: you need to be to help you save your life.
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: That's the way I look at it. I mean, somebody
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: can be ready to jump out the window. I'll walk
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: to the window begging them not to jump. But I
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: ain't jumping with them. You know what I mean? And that,
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: to me, is something that I don't... like to be
• 1:00:00
  Speaker 1: tied up to something that I like love and I
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: can't help it save itself. That one is one, one
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: that was hard to, to deal with in the early
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 1: days of the group. You know, like we had members
• 1:00:12
  Speaker 1: of the band that was younger than us and heroin
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: was the thing that they were just coming into. We
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: had passed that. It was a little older. That was
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: the older people. We didn't do that one. So we
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: were safe from that one, but the younger ones got
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 1: caught in it. And it, just as we got big,
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 1: It was catching up to them. And we was a
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: band that said we was going to be together for
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: the rest of our lives. And I realized then at
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: that point that that drug wasn't going to allow it
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 1: or might not allow us to do that for the
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: rest of our life. And it was a struggle for
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 1: a long time.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: Damn.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: You know, to dance through that one. I never would
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: let myself be that in love with somebody or something.
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: that I almost fall apart because I couldn't help them
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 1: not do something to.
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 2: Save their life.
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: Like I said, I can walk you to the window,
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 1: but I'm not jumping, which once I learned that one,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: then I don't get that kind of attached. How did
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: you know heroin was the limit?
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: Like I had no idea.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: Oh, that was growing up. When we even got out
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: of the barbershop, that was already the older guy's, doing
• 1:01:23
  Speaker 1: it and it didn't look like no fun they would
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: sleep all day so we knew that one from Newark
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: that was way ahead of Plainfield who was a suburb
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: at that time so and they were just getting it
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: no idea ain't nothing like that kind of drug where
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: somebody lame or country don't know what's going on you
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: got to maneuver through the city to get it so
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: you really got a problem and so that's the stuff
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: that really hurts The Hound, that was from the 50s.
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 1: So by the time the 60s got here, LSD, I
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: was all in.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: Once I saw a couple of people I knew that
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: didn't never smile or laugh about nothing, I saw them
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 1: take it, and they were smiling and laughing and playing
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: with the dogs. We all said, we want some of that.
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 1: Because this person don't never laugh, don't never smile with nobody.
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: And all of a sudden, the trees are beautiful. Yeah.
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: I'm like, what the hell is that? Steve Jobs created
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: the iPhone high off LSD. I can dig it.
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: Yes, sir. I mean, it had to come from somewhere.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 1: It had to come from someplace. And that's a piece
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: of work. That's like the tricorder on the Star Trek.
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: You can do everything with it.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: So when it came about, I was like, okay, here
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: it is. First, we had the Walkman. All it had
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: was the music. And then when they said, you're going
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: to be able to talk on it, And I'm like, oh,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: hell no. God tell me, are you going to be
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: able to download songs from where? The clouds. Okay, you are.
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: And it wasn't a year later before they started talking
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: about those little things that you could download songs on.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: The tablet?
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 3: iPod.
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 1: Oh, yeah, I knew you were talking.
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 3: About the iPod.
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, iPod.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: iPod.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah, them things. And they didn't last but a minute
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: because the technology was moving.
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 3: Then the phone came.
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, technology moving so fast. And at that time, I
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: was doing commercials with Microsoft. You've probably seen it. It
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: was the computer. What was this called?
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 2: It was.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: When they first had the laptop, I mean, the desktop computer.
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 1: And it was called Reinvent Yourself. It was talking about
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 1: how I reinvented myself. So I saw him 20 years later.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: He said, you ready to do another one of those?
• 1:03:42
  Speaker 1: How do you reinvent yourself? Like 30 years ago.
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: Oh, shit, Mr.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: Clinton.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: Give him a reason not to do drugs before we
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: leave because you make it sound fun.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: It ain't fun. I mean, it is fun, but it
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: ain't fun in the end. But you're doing them anyway.
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: If you don't do them, they're going to sell them
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: to you. All the stuff that you get now, prescription-wise,
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 1: it's the same stuff they were selling on the streets.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: They just made it legal so they can get the
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: tax money.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: It's basically the same drug. Oh, no, it's all of that.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: That's right.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: But the computer is the next drug, though. You're going
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: to be able to... People hook now. No, I'm talking
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: about you're going to be able to download whatever desire
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: you want in a minute. They're going to have... That's
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: going to be the message. Whatever high you want. Just
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: beep and there you are.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: Mm-mm.
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: It was funny watching him try to sense this, though.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah. He don't do it.
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 4: He just said whatever, then he turn around and be like, well,
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 4: how bad was it?
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: On a scale of one to... I'm 85. He started
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 1: to say, you'll be able to hold it. He started
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: to say, you'll be able to hold it. Any kind
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: of pussy you want. He stopped himself. You already know him.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 3: That key to the city ceremony this weekend is going
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 3: to be very entertaining.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: September 5th.
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 2: Yes. Well, yeah, by the time we air this, you're
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: already going to have your key to the city because
• 1:05:01
  Speaker 2: you're getting honored at Avon Avenue School.
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: That's where you went to school at, man. That's where
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: I went to school at, yeah.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: Wow. Southside, Avon, Clinton Place. I thought it was named
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 1: after me.
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: Well, congratulations, man.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 2: You deserve that key to the city and everything.
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: Well, I'm going to unlock something when I get it.
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: I'm going to go back and sneak in.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 2: Thanks, man.
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: I'll tell you, I was scared to come up here.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: Why?
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 5: I don't know if I'm... I might get up there
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 5: and run my mouth and say something.
• 1:05:41
  Speaker 3: You were well within the lines of 85.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 2: Man, listen.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 3: You were well within your lines of 85.
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 2: You deserve it.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: You at that age, you can say whatever the hell
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 1: you want. That's what I thought anyway. I thought I
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 1: could do it. Hey, it's George Clinton, man. We love you.
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 1: We value you. We appreciate you, my brother. Thanks, man.
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: What's up? It's the Breakfast Club. You all finished or
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: you all done?