The Iconic Bootsy Collins Speaks On 'World Wide Funk,' Embracing The New & Guitar Battles [Interview]

Photo Credit: Michael Weintrob

Celebrating a birthday and a new album, Bootsy Collins still has more of that funky stuff to share with the world.

“They call it the White House, but that’s a temporary condition too,” George Clinton, prophesied on the cut “Chocolate City” co-written by him, the late Bernie Worrell and Bootsy Collins. Though we don’t have a Black House, Bootsy Collins’ new album, dropping the day after his 66th birthday is just as funktastic. World Wide Funk, his first album in six years, features an eclectic group of musicians, including Iggy Pop, Stanley Clarke, Musiq Soulchild, Alissia Beneviste, Chuck D and Buckethead to just name a few.

LISTEN: Bootsy Collins Gets Intergalactically Funky On New Cut, "Hot Saucer"

Bootsy is still the starry-eyed otherworldly bassist, grounded in the party funk of everyman, and has been keeping it on the one for nearly 50 years now. Starting as a teenager in James Brown’s backing band, he rode through on George Clinton’s Mothership with Parliament-Funkadelic, co-writing classic jams like “Flashlight,” “Chocolate City,” “Mothership Connection and “Give Up the Funk”. He would later keep it popping with his own Rubber Band, and slay millions as a solo artist with over two dozen albums in the last forty years.

World Wide Funk is due out today on Mascot Records, following his last album Tha Funk Capital Of the World. Like James Brown did with his fatherly discipline (including making the JB's wear suits) and George Clinton provided for an outlet for all of his far-out space fantasies, World Wide Funk's strength lies not just in Bootsy's virtuosity and flexibility, but in his introduction of supremely talented newcomers like singer and songwriter Kali Uchis, singer and multi-instrumentalist Alissia Benveniste and guitar bender Justin Johnson and having them blend seamlessly with the old guards like Big Daddy Kane, Doug E. Fresh and Musiq Soulchild. Newcomers like Johnson show that the industry isn’t searching hard enough to find new talent. Bootsy found Johnson through social media. And he has been grooming the next generation of funkateers by providing instruments to disadvantaged schools through his Bootsy Collins Foundation and his Funk University until he went back out on the road.

LISTEN: Bootsy Collins Pays Tribute To Women Of Funk In Animated "Ladies' Night" Video

Iggy Pop lends his voice on the intro: "Bootsy Collins was born a long, long time ago in a subterranean cavern full of shining dinosaurs deep below." The tune, "A Salute to Bernie" honors his friend, one half of one of the greatest writing partnerships in funk music, Bernie Worrell, who died last June from cancer. Bootsy honored Worrell with his own recordings, taken from sessions the two of them worked on in 2002. The album isn't an ego-driven walk through nostalgia, but rather, proof that age has no number on imagination, nor on the funk. But still there are flashes of his familiar starry-eyed humor and wordplay on “Worth My While”: “In funk we thrust, who else been on my bus?” he asks amidst Uchis’s slippery seductive vocals. On “World Wide Funk,” he says, “Don’t start no funk won’t be none.” On “Hi-on-Heels,” he raps, “Aw twerk it. If you need more loving, put this wood in your oven.”

The iconic Bootsy Collins spoke to @Okayplayer about the old days, the new days and the coming days, including a record collaboration with Snoop Dogg.

Photo Credit: Michael Weintrob

Okayplayer: Bootsy, you were the executive producer for World Wide Funk, correct? Snoop [Dogg] and DJ Quik also produced a few songs, yes? So, tell us about your style of producing and what was the experience of working with those two was like?

Bootsy Collins: [Snoop and Quik] I’ve known for quite some time. With Quik, he and I were on the road last year and we got a chance to work with one another for a while. We had always talked about doing something together, but we never got a chance to. I happened to be working on this record and he was like, ‘I have something I want you to hear.’ He let me hear it and man, it was funky. I jumped in there and helped to develop it so it could be a track on the record, and that’s what we did. Snoop, well, we had been talking about doing a whole album, period. So, we did a whole album. I just didn’t finish my part because we were working on this record [World Wide Funk], and he said that once it was out of the way, we could jump back in and finish our record. [Laughs] We got a whole album that is just laying around until I got World Wide Funk done.

OKP: Tell me about your role as a producer on your earlier projects. What kind of things did you learn from George Clinton that you used as producer back then?

BC: The main thing I think is to make musicians feel at home and feel like gets along. Our sessions were more like a party as opposed to you coming in to work. I learned from him how to just be loose. George was like, “You got five or six hours to record. No problem. When you feel good about it, go do it.” His whole vibe was whatever you got, I love it. I was picking up all that from George, y’know. I was also picking up stuff from the engineer, Jim Vitti, who was doing the technical stuff like microphone placement and how they set up the drums.

It was on the job training. Everything I was seeing I was absorbing. Working with people is such a learning experience, and nowadays that experience is out of the equation. You play with yourself. How can a brother learn anything playing with himself? Even if you had a problem with your old lady or whatever, you could come into the studio and work it out with somebody. You’d just turn the tape on and whatever sadness or hurt or emotion you’re feeling you could put it on tape. All of that was so real.

We would put ourselves on tape and people would feel it. The people felt like they were a part of it, because they were. We weren’t no different. We felt the same stuff on the streets that everybody else felt. The only difference was that we had an opportunity to put what we felt down and get it out of our systems.

OKP: I have to say that Justin Johnson is a monster playing that guitar, Bootsy…

BC: I wanted it [World Wide Funk] to be different, but I wanted it to have some things on there that hardcore funkateers could relate to. I wanted to embrace them both—the old and the new generation. This [project] is about old school and new school and everything in between.

OKP: There are a lot of new artists on World Wide Funk that I had to look up and I was pleasantly surprised…

BC: When I was coming up I met all of these street people that were so bad on any instrument you could name. They could play anything. They were the ones that were always overlooked. No one ever signed them and they were the ones who were always on the corners being so bad on their instruments. The whole market was missing these really great people. So, I wanted to use my platform to make that statement. Y’all are missing it, man! Y’all manufacturing things, while the real talent is still on the street.

I ain’t out here to talk about me. These artists are out here on the street and they are hungry. It’s easy for me to make music, but it is more than that [to me]. It’s seeing these faces light up when it is their turn to shine. I remember that feeling when I was coming up and James [Brown] would say, “Bootsy! Hit me!” You talk about somebody shining [laughs]! George allowed me to go in the studio and experiment to find myself and I’ll never forget that.

I just had to do something instead of play and act a damn fool [laughs].

OKP: Why do you think that all of that talent came out of Cincinnati and Dayton?

Photo Credit: Michael Weintrob

BC: Every club that we went to—there was a lot of clubs between Cincinnati and Dayton—we tried to be the happening thing. You weren’t going to find it on the radio. The happening thing was being there at these after hour spots and clubs. For us, we were feeling the people, seeing the people and performing for the people. You could see what the people were wearing that night. You could hear what the artist was playing that night. What are they going to do different? You had choices on both sides with that right there. Nowadays, the only choice you got is on your iPhone. You’re not in communication with anyone.

OKP: Do you think that funk has carried on successfully into the 21st century?

BC: It is carrying on, yes, but people still don’t want to recognize the real raw. We [Parliament-Funkadelic] were scary. That was a scary thing that could’ve gotten out of hand, y’know? The market knew if this really caught on we were going to be in trouble. After we started sizzling in the early ‘80s, it was like Bootsy and them must’ve got their funk from Rick James. We were like, “Huh?” If you from that other side, you don’t know what to expect except what the radio taught. They weren’t trying to hear us.

Anything we talked about doing we had to pay extra for. Comic books in the album? Uh, no. The funky star glasses? Take it out of my money. They package it up as cheap as they can, so they can put it out and sell it for as much as they can get. We thought and felt different about that. We were gonna give the people more than what they were funkin’ for [laughs].

OKP: Whatever happened to the Sweat Band and the Uncle Jam label?

BC: It was George trying to do a whole lot of business and he really didn’t know how to do it. That’s why it fell short of what it could’ve been. It should’ve been somebody that had nothing to do with it and have George telling him what to do. The business part is the curse of this music thing. The music is the blessing and the bliss. The business part, I hate it. I had to learn how to deal with it, but that’s not really our thing.

OKP: Tell me about the tribute to Bernie Worrell on the album. Were these unreleased keyboard tracks featured on World Wide Funk?

BC: Bernie and I used to record together. Anything could be going down and all of a sudden, I would feel a vibe and say, “Let’s go ahead and put it down.” I always had a studio set up and running, so we could be rehearsing and I’d feel a vibe and we’d record it. We had a bunch of those tracks and songs that we never did anything with, so I went back and listened to them and picked the ones I felt like Bernie would want to hear. That unfinished track felt like it was the one [for World Wide Funk]. I wanted to make sure it was Bernie playing all of the keyboard parts. The only thing that we put on there that was live was the drum. I played one part, where the guitar was laid down, and Bernie played all the rest on the keyboard. It had that Bernie thing… the way he communicates. He communicates better through his keyboard than actually talking to you. He guided me through there.

OKP: “Worth My While” is a lead track from World Wide Funk that is very reminiscent of old school Bootsy…

BC: That is like one of the young parts of me, y’know? The relations thing. “What’s a Telephone Bill,” “I’d Rather Be With You,” “Oh Boy, Girl,” all those things rolled up into one. My personal, personal stash. I wanted to hear a woman’s take on it. I have a lot more women leading on this record. Women are coming out of their seats now and it’s that time. The women had something to say on this album and they stepped up and showed out.

OKP: Can you update us and your fans on what’s going on with Funk University?

BC: [Funk University] was an online school that we had about three years ago. It featured different bass players and was going on for a while until I got back onto the road and couldn’t keep up with it. [Funk University] took a lot of attention in being put together and getting the different artists involved. It was a great thing for about two-to-three years, and could be done again with the proper sponsoring. We are still working on Funk University because people love it. It was a great way to have people connect with each other and bring artists and musicians together.

Funk is making something out of nothing. We’ve always had nothing and made something out of it. That’s what we do. It’s in us. That’s what hip-hop did, y’know? Mama’s record player is in the living room? Let me see what I can do with that. Of course, mama was through with you because you were scratching up her records—but we made something out of nothing.

OKP: Switching gears a bit, but were there any memorable guitar battles that you share with us?

BC: It wasn’t a battle consciously [laughs]... We were always just trying to be the best you could be. That was what George and I would be doing. Every time I thought I would beat somebody over to the studio, all those mugs would be there practicing [laughs]. It kept fueling the fire that kept us flowing. Everybody wanted to be the best at any and every time they got a chance to be so. When you find yourself slacking somebody else would attempt to move into that position. So, you’d be in the studio and feel like dag, I wasn’t on it.

Those “battles” made me want to be better, y’know? James [Brown] would call us into the dressing room after we had really just murdered the people. He’d be there after the people had this beautiful performance from James Brown and The JB’s, and he’d be like, “Meh. Y’all weren’t on the one.” We looked at each other with a little smile like what is he talking about. “Nah, y’all wasn’t on it,” he would say. “Y’all didn’t kill me tonight.” He would do that every night! We would be trying to figure out what this crazy man is talking about. All the evidence is pointing towards us being great, and he’d be like, “Y’all wasn’t on it.” Each time he told me that it made me practice that much harder. I would practice until my fingers would bleed. And it was because James was telling me I wasn’t on it. I felt like I was, but when James Brown say you ain’t on it, you ain’t on it. So, I better practice some more and I would have the band doing the same.

He was making me a better person and I didn’t have enough sense to know it. We sometimes get ourselves into situations where you have a negative thing going on. The main thing is to take that negative and to make something positive out of it. We have such a hard time doing that because we have always been treated so negatively. So, to swallow another negative pill is too much, but that’s why we can take more [than others]. Other people haven’t gone through it. They don’t know what it feels like or they can’t relate. Ain’t no way you gonna understand that real raw funk because if you don’t go through that, there ain’t no way you gonna know how it makes you feel.

That’s what it is really about, man. Just learning how to be yourself and not getting frustrated with people who don’t know. Once you get all that in place then you can start embracing everything.

Bootsy Collins' World Wide Funk is available for purchase and streaming on all digital platforms. Press play and support the funk!

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Ericka Blount is a journalist, professor, and author from Baltimore, Maryland. Her book ‘Love, Peace and Soul: Behind the Scenes of Soul Train’ is available on Amazon. Please follow her (and us!) on Twitter @ErickaBlount.