Do U think its possible 4 Funk 2 come back from the dead?

I don't know how often Funk/y music was played on the radio back in the 70s/80s but i'm guessing it wasn't very often on pop stations, I would think that racial differences kept it separate from the rest of the bunch.

Decades have passed and now 'black' music is accepted in the mainstream and is heard on popular radio stations around the country. (well mainly just wack assed hiphop, but its usually dance-oriented music, which I consider Funk 2 B)

Given the chance, I think Funk could take the industry by storm in todays world, especially with a modernized twist.

A grooving bassline with some splashy synths tied in with some catchy Autotuned vocals would definitely sell some records.

I know a lot of people would consider this idea "selling out", so please share your thoughts.

I just want my favorite genre of music 2 stay afloat

Imagine if the Lady Gaga of today was Quasar the Jam Hero and people bashed us for supporting such a controversial act who took idea/sounds from the past. That is an alternate reality I wouldnt mind checking out.

Yeah, the fanbase of GaGa might be hip to that as well. As for in urban & hiphop, it might go too fast for a majority of today's listeners.

Digital Underground picked up some. Humpty was a sort of updated hiphop-Bootsy/Sir Nose lol. Current hiphop-acts who might pick up more funk ...

... Outkast (especially Dre3000) or Cee-Lo/Gnarls Barkley. Here and there have been some moments : Snoop's nod to The Time's "C-O-O-L" (though vocally not tight),

or Rihanna's salute to P with "Sexuality". Maybe ladiesgroups like Elektrik Dred or Nikki 16 could pick up some olskool grooves ? ...

... Maybe they already did, haven't checked them. Overall i think the hiphop-audience might not be too hip to fast funk.

The revived electro-pop scene is a good area to experience. And there's already a revival of 60s-to-early-70s funk (Sharon Jones & Dap Kings/etc...

... not my thang but all power to them though). There's a topic with new recommended acts who somehow continue the funksound :

http://prince.org/msg/8/310172

[Edited 8/4/10 5:51am]

I'm not talking about pop artists dabbling in funky themes.

I'm talking about dedicated funkateers throwing down.

Where is the new generation? The torch is waiting to be lit and carried but there isn't anyone around to do it.

A lot of obscure styles of music are still around 2day.

It's hard to find a real slamjammer, I guess Dam-Funk is the closest we are going 2 get

No disrespect 2 Dam, because I love the fact that he is holding shit down but his stuff doesnt hit as hard as I would like. He isn't necessarily young either.

Platinum Hits might be too much 2 ask 4 but thats something I could C happening. If people were truly intent on making it happen there would eventually be a breakthough, regardless of magnitude.

[Edited 8/4/10 6:04am]

Okay, i see your point. Yeah, then Dam-Funk is going in the right direction. And he has followers, due to the dj-shifts he's doing in the LA-area and elsewhere. Who knows, a good school for new funktalent : Steve Arrington & Dam...!!! - STMB

Dam-Funk might be already at a certain age, but funk gets passed on from generation to generation. Inspiration and influence has to come from somewhere. To me personally, funk is ageless. Look at this summer at a number of fests where groups like the Dazz Band, Lakeside, Midnight Star, Slave, Zapp, etc are still throwing down. Nothing wrong with learning from the classics

Shango said:

Okay, i see your point. Yeah, then Dam-Funk is going in the right direction. And he has followers, due to the dj-shifts he's doing in the LA-area and elsewhere. Who knows, a good school for new funktalent : Steve Arrington & Dam...!!! - STMB

Dam-Funk might be already at a certain age, but funk gets passed on from generation to generation. Inspiration and influence has to come from somewhere. To me personally, funk is ageless. Look at this summer at a number of fests where groups like the Dazz Band, Lakeside, Midnight Star, Slave, Zapp, etc are still throwing down. Nothing wrong with learning from the classics

Someone just has to make the right #1 'hit' and the followers will come.

Watch me do it.

paisleypark4 said:

Someone just has to make the right #1 'hit' and the followers will come.

Sho nuff

Militant said:

Watch me do it.

All power to ya

I would love Funk to make a comeback! Hopefully it would be genuine and not a gimmick. Funk broke through those barriers on slight occasion, back in the 80's. It's biggest audience was always the R&B based audience. Black folk. Your biggest #1 funk hit on black radio might break the Top 40 with airplay on some Pop stations across the country.

How? Probably some young acts who are sincerely influenced by the funk, could bring it back to prominence. Someone who can create funk hits that can appeal to today's market.

I couldn't agree more that that lane is wiiiide open. We'll have to see who, if anyone will fill it.

[Edited 8/4/10 7:10am]

[Edited 8/4/10 7:11am]

Two words: BASS GUITAR

BlaqueKnight said:

Two words: BASS GUITAR

You're right! That's where it all starts. The cornerstone of all funk.

In order for funk to make a comeback, the white masses would have to abandon black music like they did after disco's death. After disco died, the only white people who had even heard of funk groups like Cameo, The Barkays, Con Funk Shun, Lakeside, The Dazz Band, The Reddings, Bill Summers and Summers Heat, etc. were the extremely cool white people who either hung out with mostly black people or were daring and diverse enough to get into other types of music besides pop. The other white folks called funk "jungle music" and hated the hell out of it unless it was either toned down without a lot of rhythm or unless it had rock mixed into it.

The mid 1980s saw acts like Shitney Houston who were rhythmless and "safe" enough to cross the color barrier but unfortunately successful enough to influence others in the R&B scene to do the same going after some of that big money that goes along with crossing over. Unfortunately, with all these "safe" acts popping up, it left the doors wide open for shit hop to come in and fill the "rebellion" void. True, shit hop as rebellious as it is has been has been majorly successful with large white masses. However, you've got to take a look back to the early 1980s when most white folks were calling black music "jungle music". Shit hop filled the rebellion void but it didn't contain that "jungle" feel that they hated so much. In other words, it didn't contain the rhythm. Same thing with house music. When it was predominately black, you could shake ass to it. When it became loved by predominately white people, it eventually turned into trance, lost it's rhythm, and the ass shakin' stopped and the pogo stick hopping began.

Funk was a genre full of rhythm. At the risk of stereotyping, most white people have not liked music that was extremely rhythmic. Some do, but most don't. That's why a genre like shit hop could do so well in the pop market. However, if the white masses ever abandon shit hop, funk might be able to make a comeback but I truly doubt it. Shit hop has dominated for so long that black kids have been born into it, raised on it, and as a result, have no rhythm themselves. Funk can't exist with so many people existing these days with no rhythm. Yeah, someone older could record something but the kids wouldn't buy it because someone older made it.

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.

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[Edited 8/4/10 14:38pm]

It can't and it won't, unfortunately.

I guess we should just be happy with the fact that there are plenty of old funk records to explore

LoveIsTheMessage said:

It can't and it won't, unfortunately.

I guess we should just be happy with the fact that there are plenty of old funk records to explore

Well if you take MrSoulPower's word for it, funk is alive and well just not promoted in the U.S.

As long as rap music is cheap and catchy, funk can never make a comeback. Gone are the days where the target audiences (18-30ish) as a whole knew not only hip-hop but the musical influences as well. Many in my generation knew and loved the music of James Brown, Parliament, et al. years before they knew Eric B. & Rakim, Dr. Dre, PE, et al.

These days, PE is to the target audience what James Brown was to our generation, and they consider James Brown the same way I considered Louis Armstrong: real effort and patience had to be made to appreciate him as an artist who was 2 or more full generations removed from me.

Until pop music scene undergoes a revolution like it did with hip-hop, "alternative," and the big stars of the 80's, funk won't have a beachhead for a comeback.

Timmy84 said:

LoveIsTheMessage said:

It can't and it won't, unfortunately.

I guess we should just be happy with the fact that there are plenty of old funk records to explore

Well if you take MrSoulPower's word for it, funk is alive and well just not promoted in the U.S.

There's a difference between being alive and being prominent

LoveIsTheMessage said:

Timmy84 said:

Well if you take MrSoulPower's word for it, funk is alive and well just not promoted in the U.S.

There's a difference between being alive and being prominent

True.

namepeace said:

As long as rap music is cheap and catchy, funk can never make a comeback. Gone are the days where the target audiences (18-30ish) as a whole knew not only hip-hop but the musical influences as well. Many in my generation knew and loved the music of James Brown, Parliament, et al. years before they knew Eric B. & Rakim, Dr. Dre, PE, et al.

These days, PE is to the target audience what James Brown was to our generation, and they consider James Brown the same way I considered Louis Armstrong: real effort and patience had to be made to appreciate him as an artist who was 2 or more full generations removed from me.

Until pop music scene undergoes a revolution like it did with hip-hop, "alternative," and the big stars of the 80's, funk won't have a beachhead for a comeback.

I'm not expecting old artists to score new hits.

I think that new artists could take the genre to a different level

Chromeo is an example I could use, they have millions of hits on youtube.

But Chromeo isn't exactly Funk, they just have an 80s feel/

But its clear that people aren't biased against a throwback sound, someone has to take it to the extreme and start a revolution.

LoveIsTheMessage said:

minneapolisFunq said:

namepeace said:

As long as rap music is cheap and catchy, funk can never make a comeback. Gone are the days where the target audiences (18-30ish) as a whole knew not only hip-hop but the musical influences as well. Many in my generation knew and loved the music of James Brown, Parliament, et al. years before they knew Eric B. & Rakim, Dr. Dre, PE, et al.

These days, PE is to the target audience what James Brown was to our generation, and they consider James Brown the same way I considered Louis Armstrong: real effort and patience had to be made to appreciate him as an artist who was 2 or more full generations removed from me.

Until pop music scene undergoes a revolution like it did with hip-hop, "alternative," and the big stars of the 80's, funk won't have a beachhead for a comeback.

I'm not expecting old artists to score new hits.

I think that new artists could take the genre to a different level

Chromeo is an example I could use, they have millions of hits on youtube.

But Chromeo isn't exactly Funk, they just have an 80s feel/

But its clear that people aren't biased against a throwback sound, someone has to take it to the extreme and start a revolution.

That's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that the target audience has been raised on black music that has been comprised almost entirely of hip-hop and have no other frame of reference. I'm not expecting old artists to come back; that wasn't the point. The point was a new artist/group or wave of artists/groups will have a tough time under the conditions that exist today. They already have. An entire generation of talented musicians of all backgrounds who play a funk or soul sound has been pushed into the shadows of the scene.

BlaqueKnight said:

Two words: BASS GUITAR

Co-sign.

BlaqueKnight said:

Two words: BASS GUITAR

Not a funk fan, but yeah, since the early 80's and the arrival of the synth bass, the real bass in funk or rnb has almost completely disapeared.

time machine?

Funk officially evolved into disco didn't it?

thesexofit said:

Funk officially evolved into disco didn't it?

Funk was always around in some way as another genre with embellishments. So it was not just disco. Hip-hop came from funk.

[img:$uid]http://www.unity.i8i.co.uk/forum/images/smiley_ROFLMAO.gif[/img:$uid]

Andy, that was too funny! You got me spilling my tea over here! I wouldn't even try to argue with the truth.

The second statement is sad but also true. My fear is the only way funk can come back to mainstream now is if white people do it. Its already that way a little bit now. Bands like Maroon 5 or Chromeo can be as "funk-ish" as they wanna be but if Van Hunt or somebody dropped a funk CD - I mean a REAL funk CD - they would probably get dropped from whatever label they are on. What's worse is there's such a generational disrespect in the current R&B and hip-hop culture with kids embracing and rationalizing being musically illerate that its not likely that many of them seem willing to take it to the next lvel. If you're over 25, its like Logan's Run in the music business - you better run because if you try to put out music, the first thing that gets said is "you're too old to be doing this" - which is some new dumb shit that goes way beyond logic. NOBODY is too old to do music; especially good music.

vainandy said:

Same thing with house music. When it was predominately black, you could shake ass to it. When it became loved by predominately white people, it eventually turned into trance, lost it's rhythm, and the ass shakin' stopped and the pogo stick hopping began....

...Funk can't exist with so many people existing these days with no rhythm. Yeah, someone older could record something but the kids wouldn't buy it because someone older made it.

To defend Funq on his opinion that '80s funk was great, it was. I love the synth bass along with the actual bass guitar.

BlaqueKnight said:

[img:$uid]http://www.unity.i8i.co.uk/forum/images/smiley_ROFLMAO.gif[/img:$uid]

Andy, that was too funny! You got me spilling my tea over here! I wouldn't even try to argue with the truth.

The second statement is sad but also true. My fear is the only way funk can come back to mainstream now is if white people do it. Its already that way a little bit now. Bands like Maroon 5 or Chromeo can be as "funk-ish" as they wanna be but if Van Hunt or somebody dropped a funk CD - I mean a REAL funk CD - they would probably get dropped from whatever label they are on. What's worse is there's such a generational disrespect in the current R&B and hip-hop culture with kids embracing and rationalizing being musically illerate that its not likely that many of them seem willing to take it to the next lvel. If you're over 25, its like Logan's Run in the music business - you better run because if you try to put out music, the first thing that gets said is "you're too old to be doing this" - which is some new dumb shit that goes way beyond logic. NOBODY is too old to do music; especially good music.

vainandy said:

Same thing with house music. When it was predominately black, you could shake ass to it. When it became loved by predominately white people, it eventually turned into trance, lost it's rhythm, and the ass shakin' stopped and the pogo stick hopping began....

...Funk can't exist with so many people existing these days with no rhythm. Yeah, someone older could record something but the kids wouldn't buy it because someone older made it.

The Funk (horn-driven OR synth-driven) can make a mainstream comeback anytime in 2010.

The real problem is media corperation-owned FM radio stations that will NOT allow The Funk to make a comeback.

The best thing for The Funk to do is to make the comeback attempt on all video sites (especially YouTube). All new funk bands, funk producers, funk songwriters, AND funk artists needs to make themselves seen AND heard without any compromise whatsoever.

If they are going to use drum machines, it better be a hard-sounding ones. It's time to retired the Akai MPCs and get back to using the Roland TR series & the Linn Drum series.

IF they are going to use synths, they better be use to create new sounds that have NEVER been heard before. Every artist/band using the same preset sound from the same keyboard workstation is NOT acceptable.

BlaqueKnight said:

[img:$uid]http://www.unity.i8i.co.uk/forum/images/smiley_ROFLMAO.gif[/img:$uid]

Andy, that was too funny! You got me spilling my tea over here! I wouldn't even try to argue with the truth.

The second statement is sad but also true. My fear is the only way funk can come back to mainstream now is if white people do it. Its already that way a little bit now. Bands like Maroon 5 or Chromeo can be as "funk-ish" as they wanna be but if Van Hunt or somebody dropped a funk CD - I mean a REAL funk CD - they would probably get dropped from whatever label they are on. What's worse is there's such a generational disrespect in the current R&B and hip-hop culture with kids embracing and rationalizing being musically illerate that its not likely that many of them seem willing to take it to the next lvel. If you're over 25, its like Logan's Run in the music business - you better run because if you try to put out music, the first thing that gets said is "you're too old to be doing this" - which is some new dumb shit that goes way beyond logic. NOBODY is too old to do music; especially good music.

Actually, the "Logan's Run Rule" is that your life & career is potentially over at age 30, NOT 25.

The main reason why hip-hop/r&b is such a f***ing joke of a genre is because this very genre was NEVER allow to grow the hell up like the other genres did. Funk grew up. Rock/Metal grew up. Jazz grew up. Electronic grew up to become a parent AND grandparent of other electronic genres.

And since hip-hop/r&b is NOT allow to grow up, it time of this genre to die once and for all. Rap can live on through The Funk and other genres. I rather for this to happen than to put up with anymore rhythmless bullshit.