The Funkadelic Album That Predicted the Future

Fifty years: a breath. A snap of the fingers. Or in the case of Funkadelic’s Free Your Mind ... And Your Ass Will Follow—recorded in one day, with the whole band tripping on LSD—a single ageless lizard-blink of the third eye.

Is it possible that this album sounds heavier and crazier today than it did upon its release in July 1970? I think it’s very possible. In the general countercultural churn of the ’60s becoming the ’70s, after all, and in Funkadelic’s home base of Detroit in particular (where they regularly played with the MC5 and the Stooges), a carnivalesque Black ensemble that produced ghostly, searing acid rock with Motown-level chopsabout—blend in. But not now. Seen from here, from this summer, Funkadelic looks like a pure phenomenon: a superb and lonely plume of emancipatory energy.