15 Essential Funk Records Everyone Should Own

James Thomas Ramey, best known by his stage name, Baby Huey, was on his way up in the business when tragedy struck: the 400-pound, larger-than-life performer died at age 26 in 1970. His substance addiction and obesity, brought on by glandular disease, ripped away one of music’s most promising powerhouse singers.

Signed to Curtis Mayfield‘s Curtom label in 1969, Baby Huey and his band, the Babysitters, cut and issued two funk-filled singles before Ramey’s untimely death. As a tribute, Mayfield brought these along with seven other recorded performances and released the posthumous 1971 album, The Baby Huey Story: The Living Legend—an underground classic of psychedelic soul and heavy funk that’s long endured as both a sampling motherlode in hip-hop and a testament to a charismatic cult figure whose life was cut way too short.

This goldmine has rousing funk romps that showcase not only Baby Huey’s stellar singing talents (a true gritty soul shouter) but the tight musicianship of The Babysitters, bringing to mind the relentless perfection and precision of James Brown’s bands. Thanks to Mayfield’s imprint across this gem, the pounding, room-filling drums, lively horn work, crunchy rhythm guitars, organs, and that rolling fuzz bass make this a dynamite knockout in its own right, played hard and rough. 

Formed at the height of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury scene, Sly & the Family Stone broke ground with their dynamic blast of soul, funk, rock, and psychedelic pop alongside their utopian vision of integration and optimism. Yet the band and its visionary leader, Sly Stone, fell apart as the turbulent ‘60s gave way to the ‘70s.

Their fifth album, There’s a Riot Goin’ On, is as much about soured end-of-’60s disillusionment as it is about Sly Stone’s tragic descent into drugs and despair. Besides the legendary backstories behind its sessions, the album’s musical and sonic impact can’t be understated — early hip-hop owes a debt to its skeletal drum programming, warped vocals, thumped-to-death narcotic grooves, and hazy lo-fi murk.

Album opener “Luv N’ Haight” couples as a meditation on the revolutionary stance of the Black Power era and Sly’s drug-induced isolation with the repeated mantra: ”Feel so good inside myself, Don’t wanna move.” The album’s hit “Family Affair” is one of the most avant-garde singles to ever top the charts with its warped tale of familial discord. A downbeat rerecording of the band’s 1970 classic, “Thank You (Falettin Me Be Mice Elf Agin)” gets stretched out into an eight-minute jam of paranoid funk blues on “Thank You For Talkin’ to Me, Africa.” Although critics and the record-buying public debated what to make of Riot during its initial November 1971 release, it has since become widely regarded as one of the most influential and significant albums of the ‘70s.

With their first two albums, 1970’s Funkadelic and Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow, funk commander George Clinton and his crew, Funkadelic unleashed a madcap of acid-drenched soul, gospel, and rock that revolutionized funk for generations to come. But they got serious with their towering third album, 1971’s Maggot Brain, a sonic trip into the fractured state of the world circa 1971.

Reportedly inspired after Clinton told guitarist Eddie Hazel to “play like his mother had died,” the tour-de-force that is Hazel’s wailing fretwork on the album’s 10-minute-long title centerpiece captures the pain, death, and chaos its album cover suggests all at once. What follows is a brain-melting kaleidoscope of sounds that range from Hendrix-tinged freakouts (“Super Stupid” and “Hit It and Quit It”) to folky funk jingles (“Back in Our Minds”) to warped Motown-inspired soul (“Can You Get to That.”) Funkadelic would go on to push their shapeshifting funk-rock signature to zanier levels on subsequent albums, but Maggot Brain still sounds sacred and otherworldly.

By the early ‘70s, no one could deny the potency of Chicago soul giant Curtis Mayfield’s post-Impressions solo work. His role as a commentator on timely Black issues of the day was well established by the time he decided to follow the model set by fellow artist Isaac Hayes, who hit the top of the charts with his soundtrack for 1971’s Shaft, spawning a wave of other Black artists scoring movie soundtracks. In light of Hayes’ success, Mayfield responded with his soundtrack for Super Fly, a crime drama about a dope dealer making his last score before getting out of the drug game.

Packed with seminal hits, “Pusherman,” “Freddie’s Dead,” “Super Fly,” and “Give Me Your Love,” Mayfield’s sharp observations on harsh inner-city life are augmented with some of the fiercest funk grooves known to man — roaring basslines, chugging wah-wah guitars, sensuous Latin percussion, blaring horns, supple orchestrations, and Mayfield’s fragile falsetto. With a four-week run as the best-selling album in the United States, Super Fly marked Mayfield’s commercial zenith; it has retained its iconic impact as a funk milestone that trailblazed hip-hop and R&B styles to come.

 Like many of his contemporaries, James Brown infused his indomitable funk grooves with cinematic underpinnings that suggested the blaxploitation movie craze of the early 1970s. The Godfather of Soul composed the soundtracks for two American International films in 1973: The Fred Williamson-starring vehicle Black Caesar and the Jim Brown action flick Slaughter’s Big Rip Off. During that time, he was slated to score the Black Caesar sequel, Hell Up in Harlem, but it was rejected after director Larry Cohen allegedly found the music to be “the same ‘ol James Brown stuff.”

That score evolved into this 1973 release, The Payback. One of the strongest and most cohesive albums in his catalog, Brown served up a record worth of heavily dense, extended prog-funk monsters. Hypnotic and meditative, his most trusted backing band, the J.B.’s, displayed impressive stylistic range in their musicality here, stretching grooves into Fela Kuti-like African chants (the 13-minute jam session, “Time Is Running Out Fast”) and brooding late-night blues (“Forever Suffering”) to gritty street anthems (the legendary title track and “Mind Power”) and cosmic jazz-funk (“Shoot Your Shot”) over which Brown rambles, shouts, and croons into the microphone with his signature raspy delivery. An exemplary prog-funk masterpiece this is.

As funk rose to prominence from the late 1960s into the early ‘70s, many jazz vets and upstarts began dabbling with soul and funk in their music. Herbie Hancock was ahead of the pack in fusing deep funk grooves into his avant-garde jazz explorations, and it all came to fruition on his 1973 groundbreaker, Head Hunters. Intensely groovy and complex, Head Hunters found Hancock combining his past harmonic piano style with the funk’s irresistible earthiness. This is very evident on the album’s classic opener, “Chameleon,” an all-time rump-shaker built on Hancock’s futuristic synth burps and a head-bopping groove, the Afrocentric rework of jazz staple, “Watermelon Man,” and even the sprawling salute to funk pioneer, Sly Stone on “Sly.”

These rhythms are steeped in the African music and funk tradition, taken in a rolling virtuoso direction, courtesy of Harvey Mason on drums and a myriad of percussion played by Bill Summers. Unlike many other major jazz-funk albums from the 1970s, Head Hunters notably used no guitars, only centered around Hancock’s bouncy, incomparably funky keyboard work and the sharply rendered electric bass work of Paul Jackson. Bernie Maupin brings the electrified funk full circle with his dazzling saxophone work.

While Earth, Wind & Fire already explored a heady mélange of free jazz, soul, and funk on their first three albums, their fourth album, Head to the Sky, is where the Chicago-hailed ensemble drew closer to a singular, accessible approach that would herald their superstardom peak in the mid-1970s to early ‘80s. Founder and visionary Maurice White encouraged the band to employ further raw Latin rock influences that emerged on this album’s 1972 predecessor, Last Days and Time. They’re fleshed out on the scorching social statement, “Evil,” the esoteric psych-funk jam that predates neo-soul, “Clover,” and their expansive 13-minute cover of Edu Lobo‘s “Zanzibar,” which deftly shows the band’s embrace of Brazilian music. The clavinet-laden, Sly Stone-influenced “Build Your Nest” shows off their funk mastery, while somewhere in between lies brooding message songs like the inspirational title track, “Keep Your Head to the Sky,” and the low-key, introspective gospel funk of “The World’s a Masquerade.”

Long before their glossy ‘80s pop hits, New Jersey’s Kool & the Gang emerged as one of music’s tightest rhythm alchemists. James Brown allegedly cited them as “the second baddest out there” after his J.B.’s crew. Although they cut a bevy of diverse soul-jazz albums that often cornered streetwise R&B and adventurous fusion, their fourth album, 1973’s Wild and Peaceful, established them as true leaders of the groove. Influenced by Manu Dibango’s African classic, “Soul Makossa,” bassist Robert “Kool” Bell and company demonstrate their punchy, horn-driven sound across monstrous jams, “Funky Stuff,” “Hollywood Swinging,” and “Jungle Boogie.”

The band even predicts disco and future house music styles on the heavy-grooving romp “This Is You, This Is Me.” The album’s underrated highlight, “Heaven At Once,” is a breezy spoken word call-and-response, where Kool drops the band’s clever manifesto: “We are scientists of sound, we’re mathematically putting it down,” followed by a tight horn breakdown. Sporting three #1 R&B hits, Wild and Peaceful became the band’s commercial breakthrough and remains a funk landmark.

After leaving Westbound Records, Dayton’s Ohio Players hit the high stakes when they signed to Mercury Records and released their label debut, Skin Tight. A turning point, Skin Tight found the Dayton crew tightening up the quirky yet razor-sharp street funk they established during their Westbound tenure. Bottom-heavy, elastic bass lines, punchy horn arrangements, a thick tapestry of percussion, and wah-wah guitars all fleshed out their sound by this point. Guitarist Leroy “Sugarfoot” Bonner‘s theatrical voice is all over the album, a signature hallmark of the Ohio Players sound.

The syncopated rhythms and ascending horn part of the title track give way to the sly, snaky groove of “Streakin’ Cheek To Cheek.” Such slow-burning bedroom ballads as “It’s Your Night/Words of Love,” and the dreamy 7-minute slow jam “Heaven Must Be Like This” contrast the warped, jazzy funk of “Jive Turkey” (arguably one of their best singles). Along with 1974’s Fire, 1975’s Honey, 1976’s Contradiction, and 1977’’s Angel, Skin Tight is one of the Players’ essential releases and a classic early ’70s funk album.

Riding high off the success of their first hit single, the sultry Stevie Wonder-penned come-on, “Tell Me Something Good,” and its parent album, Rags to Rufus, the Chicago-hailed band Rufus and their vivacious 21-year-old frontwoman, Chaka Khan, had little time to rest on their laurels. Between strenuous touring and crucial personnel changes, they would soon convene at Los Angeles’ famed Record Plant to lay down their second release of 1974 and third overall offering, Rufusized. Where Rags to Rufus found the band polishing up the bluesy funk-rock vibe of their early years, Rufusized was their first victory lap. Known for her booming, versatile voice and free-spirited style, Chaka Khan is one of the undisputed queens in the funk game.

Often misunderstood during her prime, Betty Davis’ indomitable legacy as a daring funk-rock trailblazer looms large today, thanks partly to the contemporary reappraisal of her classic work in the funk pantheon. Long before daredevil ladies dominated pop, R&B, and hip-hop spaces, Davis was one of the first to use sexual expression as a weapon to destroy lotharios with her dominant sexual power.

This 1975 masterpiece, Nasty Gal, was the last of three albums she released before retiring from the music game. As with everything she was known for, it’s another no-holes-barred blast of raunchy funk. Among the downright nasty jams is a powerful kiss-off to the media, “Dedicated to the Press,” which Betty wrote as a rebuttal to conservative detractors who dissed her brazen brand of music and sex, as well as a salute to her peers, “F.U.N.K,” where she cleverly name drops everyone from Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix to Barry White and Tina Turner. Betty Davis was a true legend and ahead of her time.

Mothership Connection was the album that broke Parliament from masters of party-oriented funk to Afrofuturist funk heroes. Led by legendary funk ringmaster George Clinton, who took on the character of Star-Child in this loopy sci-fi saga where hip brothers from the streets take over the planet, Mothership Connection is the Kind of Blue of funk music. It’s packed with sprawling grooves of keyboard whiz Bernie Worrell’s inventive synths and Cordell Mosson and Bootsy Collins’ bumping basslines, building rich layers of sounds where dozens of musicians and singers play off each other.

Two back-to-back singles — “Mothership Connection (Star Child)” and “P. Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up)” — were urban radio smashes and were famously sampled two decades later by Dr. Dre for his G-Funk masterpiece, The Chronic. But the album’s centerpiece and crossover hit, “Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof Off the Sucker),” broke Clinton’s otherworldly vision to a wider crowd, making it one of the many seminal funk anthems of the ‘70s. Mothership Connection set the stage for more high-concept funk sagas from the P-Funk collective, including 1976’s underrated The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein, 1977’s equally brilliant Funkentelechy vs. The Placebo Syndrome, and 1978’s underwater epic, Motor-Booty Affair.

Many often cite The Isley Brothers solely as a soul and funk band. While there’s no way to understate their impact on soul and funk music, their roots have firmly been in rock & roll since the late ’50s (they’re just as vital to shaping and shifting rock music than they’re typically credited for — so much so that there’s still those that don’t know pre-fame Jimi Hendrix was once the featured guitarist in their band.) By the time Go for Your Guns dropped in the spring of 1977, the Isleys had undergone several reinventions and proved their staying power as funk-rock hitmakers.

An all-time underrated great whose guitar wizardry summoned a brew of Jimi Hendrix’s Black psychedelic magic, Eddie Hazel’s freewheeling funk ferocity, and the wails of B.B. King and Albert King, Ernie Isley showed all his cards all over this album (even going so far as playing all the drums.) The result was a faultless gem of late-period psychedelic soul, which boasted tough funk-rock grooves built around baby brother Marvin Isley‘s speaker-rumbling  bass and a pair of all-time classics.

Although he was crowned Motown’s hit-making prince who kept the label’s commercial power afloat in the disco era, Rick James hit a snag at the start of the ‘80s. His first effort of the decade, the 1980’s misunderstood Garden of Love was built around syrupy soul and funk that alienated James’ punk-funk-loving fan base. He needed to be brought back down to Earth, so he took to the tough inner-city realism that was his conduit to the world for inspiration and came up with his fifth album, Street Songs.

A striking classic of hard-edged funk that melded new wave, disco, soul, and pop sensibilities, Street Songs found James at his most autobiographic, waxing tales based on the people and experiences he knew in the Buffalo projects he grew up in. He morphs from street philosopher on “Ghetto Life” to tender romancer on “Make Love to Me” and the epic 7-minute scorcher, “Fire and Desire” with kindred spirit, Teena Marie. Through it all, he presents himself as the daring badass he always was, going so far as to deliver a no-holes-barred, reggae-tinged critique on police brutality with “Mr. Policeman” that predates hip-hop and Black Lives Matter, and then flaunting his wild side on the enduring bass-driven hits, “Super Freak” and “Give it to Me Baby.” 

 In the funk heritage, Prince‘s edgy, futuristic brew of electro, soul, rockabilly, pop, and new wave stood ahead of the pack. Five albums into his fledgling career, he broke the burgeoning Minneapolis sound to a wider audience with his royal funk statement, 1999, fusing elements of the Parliament-Funkadelic aesthetic with his idiosyncratic world of risqué sex obsessions, taut Linn LM-1 machine beats, artsy Oberheim OB-SX synth-scapes, and godly guitar solos that were sonically ahead of the curve.

What put 1999 over the top was Prince’s ability to put all of his genre dabblings together without a single track sounding out of place. Sprawling synth-funk grooves gave way to smooth pop (the immortal “Little Red Corvette” or the anthemic “Free”), only to take a left turn with the rockabilly-tinged “Delirious” or claustrophobic, lust-filled jams, “Let’s Pretend We’re Married” and “Automatic.” Aside from its crossover smashes, genre-defying wonders like “Something in the Water (Does Not Compute)” and “All the Critics Love U in New York” alone inarguably predated what’s touted in contemporary Black music as avant-garde or “alternative.”