Maggot Brain

Produced by Clinton with Armen Boladian as executive producer, it opens with a spoken monologue from Clinton about the maggots in the mind of the universe, then Maggot Brain, built on Eddie Hazel's solo. The five songs that follow include Can You Get to That, which features the backing group Hot Buttered Soul, and You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks, which argues for interracial unity over electronically distorted drums. Super Stupid, a junkie's tale, drew a comparison with Black Sabbath from Pitchfork. The closer, Wars of Armageddon, is a nine-minute freak-out of sound effects and crowd noise.

The cover, photographed by Joel Brodsky with the model Barbara Cheeseborough, shows a screaming woman's head emerging from the earth, and the liner notes are a polemic on fear supplied by the Process Church of the Final Judgement. The album reached number 108 on the Billboard 200 and the top 20 of the R&B albums chart but missed the British chart. Rolling Stone's Vince Aletti found it limited when it appeared in September 1971. Years later Pitchfork's Dave Segal called it a monument of psychedelic funk and a defining document of Black rock music in the early 1970s. Pitchfork placed it 17th on its list of the best albums of the 1970s in 2009, and Rolling Stone ranked it 136th in 2020. Soon after the release Funkadelic effectively disbanded, with Fulwood fired, Ross gone and Nelson quitting over money. A 2005 reissue added three bonus tracks, including an alternate mix of the title track with more of the full band.