Whats your pick?
i'll go with:
Lionel Richie
Kool and a Gang
Isley brothers

Not this shit again

thebanishedone said:

Goin' by this, everyone who did FUNK sold out.

-Cameo
-Prince
-The Jacksons
-James Brown
-Earth, Wind and Fire

The biggest screwup that Prince did was selling out to WB and signing that 10 album contract or whatever it was in 1989. It was an obviously dumb move to everyone but him.

Harlepolis said:

Exactly. Didn't we all agree last year that it was a tie between Lionel Richie & Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds?

TonyVanDam said:

Yep.

Timmy84 said:

I always thought Lionel and Babyface were R&B/pop guys rather than "funk". They each had big hits with ballads in each of their bands (The Commodores and the Deele) before they went solo.

...anyway, to me, it's not about "selling out", it's about "cashing in"! There's nothing wrong with musicians getting paid well for what they do.

DerekH said:

Exactly. I'm not a big fan of "pop" music, but how many "pure" musicians starve? If you can make a career, if you can feed your family by playing music, then you play music. You do what you have to do to make sure you are not forgotten when your Art is no longer popular.

DerekH said:

Yeah that's true.

DerekH said:

But it's still very disappointing when funk musicians have to turn their backs on The Funk in order to "cash in" with crossover pop success.

Yeah but you have artist who followed their muse
and it paid off big time they are legends now Prince ,
David Bowie,Stevie Wonder.
Maybe they had a fling with cheesy music but
they never lost their integrity like Lionel did
and some other artist.
Imagine that Lionel never had solo career,
he would be an icon today based on his Commodores work

TonyVanDam said:

I guess Lionel felt the music he and the Commodores were making prior to "Just to Be Close to You" wasn't doing it and after seeing how successful Marvin's ballads were, he decided to go for it...and so did the Commodores, since it wasn't uncommon for funk bands to do pop ballads. In fact, the Commodores remained with a pop sound following Lionel's departure.

But Lionel didn't wrote balads only .
he wrote or cowrote their gritties funkiest songs

Timmy84 said:

Sure, the song Nightshift was a major hit. But The Commodores still had uptempo tracks like Going To The Bank & Animal Instincts. Some of the funk was still there, but in bite-sized.

TonyVanDam said:

That's what I meant. I don't know if I could call those songs "funk", maybe "dance-pop".

Hookers do the same thing but get bashed for it. I'm fine with them though because the more money they make, they funkier they get.

Timmy84 said:

You're right. If you listened to the Nightshift album it sounded like
the soundtrack to a cheesy 80's flick. The song Going to the Bank may
have been alright if it weren't for the cheesy lyrics. Animal Instinct
was serious cheese.

Apart from the George Clinton camp, most funk bands from the seventies and early eighties have sold out, or simply disappeared.

Kool and the Gang and EWF turned into disco-outfits doing Vegas-like live-shows.

Lionel Richie decided he wanted to be the next Michael Jackson (in terms of popularity and cheesieness).

Cameo and Zapp werent able to evolve on an artistic level, and disappeared.

Sly Stone seems to be trapped into his personal drug-universe.

And most bands who tried to jump on the bandwagon of the Minneapolis sound, were simply not talented enough to built a career on it.

IMO the best funk in the last 20 years has come either from non-american bands, or cross-over bands mixing funk with rock and several other styles:
- In the nineties you had a funk-revival over here in Europe with bands like Gotcha from the Netherlands and the French Funk Federation from, yes, France. Bands keeping the p-funk alive, who were especially great on stage.
- Cross-over bands like Living Colour (Whats my favourite colour baby?), Fishbone (Nastyman), Rage against the machine (several songs), King's X (We were born to be loved) and Urban Dance Squad (Grand Black Citizen, Some ChitChat) were doing way funkier shit then those lame New Jack Swing and R&B bands in the nineties.
- Funk has also became more and more of a 'mix-element' in modern electro music (Daft Punk) and Indie-music (the punkfunk-revival).

I take these kind of funk-influences ANY day over some boring, discofied show by the current day EWF or Kool and the gang.

Timmy84 said:

Timmy84 said:

there is another great gif of a little kid who was scared while using the computer ??I loved that one