While much of the United States engaged in lively debates about how the country should celebrate its 250th birthday, Black Americans from all over the country journeyed to New Orleans to attend Essence Fest, which bills itself as a gathering to “celebrate Black excellence in all its forms.” Trump’s Great American State Fair suffered artist cancellation after cancellation until rain ultimately melted Vanilla Ice’s chance to perform in DC. In contrast, Essence’s three-day takeover of the Superdome included names like Michelle Obama, Cardi B, and T.I. with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra. On July 5, the festival opened its final night with a historic performance by George Clinton, who promised to take his band Parliament-Funkadelic and attendees far away from all the mess and into outer space. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of their iconic prop, the Mothership, a new incarnation of the spaceship would touch down once again in the city that hosted it for the first time.
On October 27, 1976, Parliament-Funkadelic unveiled the original Mothership during a performance at the Municipal Auditorium in New Orleans. The mighty fusion of metal and lights brought the cover of Parliament’s wildly successful 1975 album Mothership Connection to life. The New Orleans debut featured the Mothership kicking off the show, a feat that worked the crowd into such a frenzy that all future appearances featured the landing later in the set. As Clinton’s longtime manager Archie Ivy recently told Gambit, “New Orleans was the only place that it was ever seen in the way we had initially designed.” In local weekly newspaper The Courier’s November 4, 1976 issue, David Hershkovits described fans climbing the side of the Municipal Auditorium to sneak in via an open window on the fourth floor. In The States-Item’s November 6, 1976 issue, Chuck Bauerlein detailed that around 6,000 people entered the now-vacant venue to witness the vessel’s first flight.
Hershkovits expressed great enthusiasm about the 1976 performance in his review, writing that “Everyone within hearing range will be moved to ‘Give Up the Funk’ and enter the spiritual ecstasy of P-Funk Nirvana.” In a recent interview for Gambit, Ivan Neville, a member of Dumpstaphunk and the son of Aaron Neville, described the 1976 concert as something that “definitely inspired” him as an aspiring musician. Although the concert influenced at least one of the city’s most prominent funk musicians, Bauerlein dismissed the performance’s musical qualities. He wrote, “The excitement of Clinton’s show is almost entirely visual, and undoubtedly that’s one of the prime reasons the show was so well attended here. However, New Orleans never really gave up its funk to Clinton. Its hometown funk is much more heavenly than the sound that Clinton conjured up.”
Half a century later, I was surprised to learn that Parliament-Funkadelic’s visuals can still be controversial. The first four minutes of the band’s hour-and-a-half set at Essence were dedicated to a cosmic AI slop video that featured the Mothership dumping chocolate goo over a cityscape, depictions of several famous P-Funk aficionados as clones, and the Mothership flying towards the Superdome. A company named Lightbrush took seven weeks to create the video from over 23,000 renders. A vaguely worded Instagram post hints that longtime P-Funk artist Overton Loyd had some degree of involvement with the project. Major portions of the video were certainly indebted to his style, but were executed with stiff animations that lacked a personal touch. The video attempted to deepen P-Funk’s already long-standing mythology. However, sound issues within the Superdome made it difficult to understand much of the deep booming narration, which was provided by Ivy after Lightbrush failed to create an AI voice model that adequately mimicked Clinton.
It may seem surprising for a living legacy artist to willingly come so close to cloning their voice, but Clinton is no stranger to clones and mutations. The original Mothership debuted during a tour that promoted a Parliament album named The Clones of Dr. Funkenstein. P-Funk has also served as some of hip-hop’s grooviest sample material, with everyone from Snoop Dogg to De La Soul having scored career-defining hits off of their sound. In May, Cultured published a discussion between I Love Boosters director Boots Riley and Clinton in which Clinton disagreed with Riley’s anti-AI stance and remarked that, “We can do passion with A.I.” Clinton has made it clear that he considers AI a tool. But, as Riley pointed out, so much of P-Funk’s eccentric character has come from a distinctly human element, whether it be Clinton’s own unorthodox choices in the studio or Pedro Bell’s chaotic illustrations that set them apart from the herd. The video attempted to push Clinton’s long-established afrofuturism into new frontiers, but instead wound up feeling woefully dated.
Once the slop subsided, the flesh and blood musicians took to the stage, albeit giving up the funk to a sparsely populated Superdome. Some serious funkateers, including myself, powered through the rain and arrived early enough to witness an elderly security guard throw up the P-Funk sign (their version of heavy metal’s devilish horned hand gesture) before he opened the gates an hour ahead of the band’s 7 p.m. slot. Many didn’t arrive until much later in the night, just barely witnessing the Mothership or, in many cases, missing it entirely.
Seemingly unfazed, P-Funk kicked off their set with “(Not Just) Knee Deep.” Veteran saxophonist Greg Thomas scatted through his parts from the original 1979 recording while an ASL interpreter imitated his rapid flow on large side screens. Clinton, standing on the verge of turning 85 years old, stomped around the stage in a shiny costume and motioned for the crowd to clap along with him. Behind the two, a literal mob of performers shuffled around the stage. Although it was impossible to count all of the constantly moving figures, the number of vocalists alone were on par with the number of members in a big band. While the performers looked like ants from the Dome’s upper seats, bold costume choices like Garrett Shider‘s golden wings and Scottie Clinton‘s massive Marie Antoinette-style wig still made striking visual impacts.
“Is this one nation?” screamed Shider, son of the band’s now deceased diaper-wearing guitarist Garry Shider, during his usual introduction to “One Nation Under A Groove.” The band’s signature flag, a reinterpretation of the American flag, appeared on the massive screens behind them. Just one day after America’s 250th birthday, it felt powerful to have a flag that we could unite under without the weight of ideological warfare. This was, as Shider sang, “a chance to dance your way out of your constrictions.”
While classic cuts are to be expected when seeing a legacy act, Clinton didn’t stick to just the hits or even vintage deep cuts during his limited slot. He put the younger members, including actual grandchildren from the P-Funk family tree, into the spotlight for a medley of their own raunchy hip-hop tracks from 2014‘s First Ya Gotta Shake the Gate. During these songs, Clinton served as their hype man, energetically whipping his arms to the beat. What P-Funk’s path will look like whenever Clinton stops hitting the road is uncertain, but the younger members showed that the group can do more than just call back to glory days.
“Let’s give it up to the man that’s been doing this thing for over 70 years,” announced Michael “Clip” Payne before Clinton’s now-gravelly voice rattled off the opening lines to “P. Funk (Wants to Get Funked Up).” Indeed, Clinton was just a teenager in the 1950s when he formed a doo-wop group named the Parliaments and planted the seed that would eventually grow into the Parliafunkadelicment Thang. He still confidently rules over his intergalactic empire while adorning his signature flashy attire. Clinton zipped around in a scooter during rehearsals for Essence, but was running around the stage and working the crowd into a frenzy on the big night. He often took breaks to sit, but giving up the funk is no easy task at nearly 85 years old.
Clinton’s undeniable dedication should be commended and special guests appeared throughout the set to do just that. Nona Hendryx, one-third of Labelle, got deep in the “Cosmic Slop” with Clinton and Shider. Outkast rapper Big Boi and Clinton took turns reciting lines to the spoken word introduction of “Maggot Brain.” “Free your mind,” said Big Boi. “And your ass will follow,” replied Clinton.
After reciting the introduction to “Maggot Brain,” Big Boi emphasized guitarist Michael Hampton’s name not once, but twice. It was a subtle acknowledgement of the decades that Hampton has put into transforming the iconic guitar solo since joining the band as a teenage shredder in 1974. Funkadelic released Eddie Hazel’s original version of the soaring solo in 1971, but Hampton has kept the piece alive. When his hands moved up and down the neck of his guitar, it wasn’t a stiff imitation of a long-gone guitar legend. It was a genuine moment of self-expression that pierced the soul. For eight minutes, a surprising wave of silence overtook the Dome as attendees were transfixed by Hampton’s ability to seemingly access another plane. When Hampton’s final notes faded away, the Dome erupted into massive applause. After the show, DJ Soul Sister wrote on Instagram that, “I thought it wasn’t gonna go over well at all with the Essence crowd. Boy, was I wrong.” If there ever was a counterargument to Bauerlein’s 1976 argument that P-Funk has little to offer beyond visuals, it is the deeply spiritual guitarwork of Hampton, the only musician onstage at the Dome who was alongside Clinton during the original Mothership landing.
“Partying on the Mothership!” declared Clinton proudly as he stepped out of his seat to hype up the audience during “Mothership Connection.” As the song gave way to its signature chant of “Swing down, sweet chariot,” a new yet familiar lead vocal rose to the front. Screens revealed it was an archival recording of deceased member Glenn Goins, whose powerful voice used to call down the Mothership during its original run. The video on screen showed him ushering in the Mothership in Houston just days after the vessel made its grand debut in New Orleans. Gospel singer Kim Burrell then emerged to lend her mighty vocal chords in the mob’s modern-day attempt at calling down the funky UFO.
Audience members had been looking up, down, and to the sides, speculating where we might see the Mothership. Finally, the metal vessel made its slow descent from behind some of the massive video screens above the stage. The mythological chariot’s first physical incarnation unceremoniously disappeared in obscurity during the ‘80s. A second one was constructed to fly alongside the band during the ‘90s and later found a forever home in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in DC. Miraculously, the Mothership had now been granted a third coming with yet another shiny new model appearing on stage alongside Clinton. Inside the Dome, an array of multi-colored lights flashed from behind thick jets of smoke as the shiny exterior slowly became visible. The metallic titan promised us a momentary escape from this world, but, in a sharp contrast to the ‘70s, most of the room was occupied with people pulling out their phones to document the occasion.
The theatrics didn’t just end with the very identifiable flying object. As the saucer reached the stage and the music finally petered out, a figure emerged from the smoke. A pimped-out George Clinton now brandished a futuristic crown, a blinged-out cane, and white furs as he made a slow stroll down a set of stairs. “Yo man. Loan me yo’ spaceship. I’ll bring it right back,” quipped Payne like some sort of beggar cozying up to outer space royalty. The band then launched into the hard dance grooves of “Flashlight.” Clinton armed himself with Lightbrush’s sleek new model of the Bop Gun. He lugged the massive weapon across the stage and took aim at the long-nosed dance-hater Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk, who was portrayed by special guest Savion Glover for the night. After being hit by the gun’s light, Sir Nose changed his step so much that the band dropped out on multiple occasions so that the whole Superdome could hear him bust into mic’ed-up tap dance solos. It’s the type of bizarre fever dream concept that would’ve felt corny in almost anyone else’s hands, but it was perfectly at home, right underneath the Mothership.
The grand finale was “Atomic Dog,” but unfortunately the Dome’s acoustics made it hard to discern much of what was going on. Still, it was a spectacle nonetheless. Durand Bernarr and Scarface came out to bark. Then, a sea of men from the Omega Psi Phi fraternity, of which Clinton is an honorary member, flooded the stage. The stage was on the verge of overflowing as Trombone Shorty, Big Freedia, Black masking Indians, and decked-out members of Zulu followed suit and began turning it up alongside the Mothership. The muddy acoustics made it difficult to grasp much of Freedia’s contributions. Thankfully, Clinton shoved his mic into Trombone Shorty’s horn to boost a powerful trombone solo that reverberated across the whole Dome.
In 1976, Bauerlein wrote off P-Funk to preach about the pseudo-religious qualities of our hometown funk. In 2026, it was clear that both could co-exist and even intermingle underneath the Mothership. As the band and guests transitioned into grooving on a turbocharged riff, the Mothership slowly embarked on its lift-off, ascending back into the air and out of this world. It was a moment that reminded us that we only get to live with the Mothership momentarily. There would be no stowaways, except for maybe George Clinton himself. As the grandiose chariot and the conductor of all this glorious chaos bid us all farewell, many rose for a standing ovation. For an hour and a half, we were able to put reality aside and escape into space.
photo by William Archambeault
