Funkadelic - Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow - Vinyl LP

2026

Factoring George Clinton's surprise at hearing the voice of Martha Reeves during a retrospective playback of the ten-minute title track, there's reason to doubt the Parliament-Funkadelic leader's memory in his claim that Free Your Mind...And Your Ass Will Follow was recorded in a day. Context is in his favor. This second Funkadelic album was released only five months after the self-titled debut, during the same month Parliament made their full-length debut with Osmium, and around the time Osmium co-producer Ruth Copeland offered her Self Portrait, featuring much of the same personnel. Clinton and company were also taking it to the stage during this whirlwind period, often playing in and around their Detroit home base. One day might have been all they could spare. 

With Funkadelic a Top Ten hit on Billboard's soul chart -- aided by three charting singles, including "I'll Bet You," promptly covered by the Jackson 5 -- the band responded with this considerably shorter and less radio-friendly follow-up. The latter quality at the least is a result of Clinton's curiosity in finding out what would happen if the whole crew recorded on acid. Free Your Mind certainly goes further out than the band's debut, as evidenced by looser song structures (drawn from material informally developed at gigs), maximized reverb, and other studio effects adding to the sense of lysergic mania. The title song places the listener in the eye of a storm generated in no small part by Bernie Worrell's darting, blown-out organ, the grinding guitar action of Eddie Hazel and Tawl Ross, and its liberational (if discombobulated) sloganeering. 

The blazing "Friday Night, August 14th" sees Billy Bass Nelson, flanked by the pre-Dawn Telma Hopkins and Joyce Vincent, on the prowl with cash to flash: "My income tax return came through/I played oh-forty-seven and hit for two." Thematic continuity is maintained with the following "Funky Dollar Bill," linking the chasing and hoarding of wealth to drug dependency, street hustling, absentee fatherhood, and war. Worrell's piano stabs and fillips are strikingly high in the mix here. "I Wanna Know If It's Good to You?," the lone single, might be the sleaziest P-Funk groove of all. It gives way to the warped and distressed blues of "Some More," where Clinton laments incurable pain and a drained wallet, and the finale "Eulogy and Light," an ominous monologue that plays off the Lord's Prayer and Psalm 23 in its observation of capitalist ills. Next up was the masterstroke, Maggot Brain. 

Andy Kellman - AMG

https://www.allmusic.com/album/free-your-mindand-your-ass-will-follow-mw0000203661#review