Funkadelic went nearly two full years without releasing an album, thanks to a busy schedule on the Parliament side of things — including, but by no means limited to, the Earth Tour, the recording of Funkentelechy Vs. The Placebo Syndrome, and its followup Motor Booty Affair, and the rapid emergence of all sorts of solo-member side projects. And yet when Funkadelic came back in September of ’78, it wasn’t only a dramatic triumph of a re-emergence, it brought one of the most important later-period members into the group. Walter “Junie” Morrison was a natural fit for P-Funk; they’d been Westbound labelmates when he was in the Ohio Players, doing incomprehensible, wonderful things with ARP synthesizers and a funny “Granny” voice and pouring the foundation for an entire cosmopolis’s worth of g-funk tropes. (Any bio of his that doesn’t mention “Funky Worm” as soon as possible should be sent back for rewrite.) Junie had become good friends with Garry Shider somewhere along the line, and he found himself in the P-Funk fold soon enough. There, he wasted approximately zero time making his mark: the first track he co-wrote and arranged was “One Nation Under A Groove,” which sold a million and topped the R&B charts for a year’s-best six straight weeks. A catalytic impact like that from the addition of one particularly talented man hadn’t been felt so strongly since the Yankees signed Reggie Jackson the previous year.

As the co-writer of nearly every track on the original LP — not counting the bonus 45 (and more on that later) — Junie wound up making his first impressions on what also turned out to be an amazing ensemble effort at redefining what Funkadelic meant as an entity. By late ’78, psychedelia was long distant, hard rock was becoming infused with the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal, and radio had never been more blatantly segregated — Phil Lynott aside, practically every voice you heard on AOR was white. That could be why the wigged-out Iwo Jima scene on the cover is raising a red, black, and green flag with “R&B” emblazoned on it — but it could also be why they cranked out the electrifying, genre-fusing anthem “Who Says A Funk Band Can’t Play Rock?!” (which Clinton calls “a sequel to ‘Mommy, What’s A Funkadelic?'”). With Funkadelic’s place in the micro-programmed, fragmented and segmented rock ‘n’ roll world of the late ’70s in limbo, they seem driven to find another way. And they reach it under the guidance of Michael Hampton’s guitar — needling and searing on “Who Says…”, burbling like a sudden stormcloud’s raindrops on the Latin-inflected “Groovalegiance,” and shaming every mellow-flashy L.A. session man with his freewheeling licks on “Promentalshitbackwashpsychosis Enema Squad (The Doodoo Chasers).” Throw in the 45, and you’re also rewarded with the acetylene-torch heat of his performance on “Lunchmeataphobia (Think! It Ain’t Illegal Yet!)” and a live-recorded, then-rare Hamptonization of “Maggot Brain” that severs heartstrings with surgical finesse.

On top of that, it’s the most quotable P-Funk record going, with its towering title cut and its purposeful get-down motivation (“Here’s a chance to dance our way out of our constrictions”) only the beginning. There has never been an exercise in scatology more profoundly ridiculous than “Enema Squad,” an extrapolation of the then-in-vogue sentiment that “shit happens” into a cranial-proctology diagnosis (“The world is a toll-free toilet/ Our mouths neurological assholes/ And psychologically speaking/ We’re in a state of mental diarrhea”) that prescribes a musical remedy. “Cholly (Funk Get Ready To Roll)” is funk-as-epiphany in peak form. And even deep cut “Into You,” which gets relatively short-shrift attention-wise, has a hell of a first verse declaration: “I can’t get into the neutron bomb.” Once the album’s overarching message gets together — unclog your mind, shake off your preconceptions, and let funk give you a new homeland — all that’s left to do is salute.