Bootsy Collins
“When I start on a project now, it's about getting the energy from people around me,” says funk maestro Bootsy Collins. “Because the way I came up, with a band, I don't ever want to lose that. It's important to me to see who the universe brings for me, and I've been really blessed that every time I want to do a new record, I get these incredible musicians around me, right on time. And that's what this album is about—hooking up with different musicians and artists, and mainly a lot of young people.”
Talking about his new Album of the Year Number One Funkateer leads Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Collins to revisit the most pivotal moment in his legendary career, when James Brown hired the Pacemakers—the band led by teenage Bootsy, born October 26, 1951 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and his brother Catfish—to replace his backing group in 1970.
“I understand now why we were really important at that particular time for James Brown,” says Collins. “It wasn't just the music. It was because we were lit up, and I understand that more now. With the young artists that are really on fire, I get lit up, and it reminds me that you don't have to just stand around and not be feeling it, you can be absorbing all this fresh, new energy. I get off on that. I guess you can say that I moved from being a player and now I'm a coach. I want to be looked at as a help, a mentor, somebody they can look up to and trust. That's my goal.”
Renamed the J.B.’s, the Collins brothers’ band helped Brown create such intense masterworks as "Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine," "Soul Power," and "Talkin' Loud and Sayin' Nothing." After meeting George Clinton, Bootsy aligned his “space bass” with the Parliament-Funkadelic universe, playing on most of their landmark albums over the next decade and co-writing such classics as "Up for the Down Stroke," "Tear the Roof Off the Sucker (Give Up the Funk)," and the chart-topping "Flash Light."
He also led the side project Bootsy’s Rubber Band, recording multiple gold-certified albums and the Number One R&B hit “Bootzilla,” and began contributing to recordings by artists including Keith Richards, Iggy Pop, and Herbie Hancock. When Rolling Stone put together their list of the Greatest Bassists of All Time, Bootsy was ranked in the top five.
So in addition to working with young artists like Barbara Teleki (whose blazing guitar rips up “Barbie T & Me”) and the mysterious Bootdullivan, Collins brought in some other legendary contributors to help him mix things up on Album of the Year, including longtime friend Dave Stewart of Eurythmics.
“I asked Dave if he would be interested in collaborating,” says Collins, “and that sparked the first vibe of, yeah, I can stretch out—I can make some rock and funk and merge that together with some hip-hop. That's what we did on the first single, ‘The Influencers.’
“Then on ‘Satellite,’ I heard him playing acoustic guitar and that put me in the right mood,” he continues. “Okay, this can be, like, a real song from Bootsy. I usually don't do real songs, I guess that's part of my thing, but that one and ‘Alien Flytrap’ brought me back to why people do songs with a form and a structure and this time, I wanted to.”
The album also reunites Collins with Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, and tha Dogg Pound, all of whom helped keep the P-Funk flag flying by mutating the sound into the West Coast G-Funk era. “Even before we knew each other, we were drawn to each other,” says Collins. “They'll never forget, and we'll never forget them, because they kept the fire burning. It's like we're each other's keeper. They can call me, I can call them, whatever you need, I'm there.”
On “I Am A.I.,” Collins takes on the most controversial technology of our time, embracing artificial intelligence as only Bootsy can. “I always look forward to whatever new is coming,” he says. “That’s the only way I can expand and continue to evolve. Putting up roadblocks is what old people do. So, yeah, I want to mess with it—I want to experiment with it now, so I don't get lost when the real sauce comes and be left out of the whole thing. That's probably why I'm still around, because I refuse to just give up and say since that's coming in, I'm going out. It's coming whether you like it or not, so I'd rather learn about it and get involved.”
This open-minded attitude has helped Collins reach new generations for more than five decades. He collaborated with dance superstars Deee-Lite on their 1990 smash “Groove Is In the Heart,” provided the lead vocal on Fatboy Slim’s Grammy-winning 2000 hit “Weapon of Choice,” and acted as the narrator on Silk Sonic’s 2021 platinum album An Evening with Silk Sonic (he even gave Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak the name for their project).
The seventeen tracks on Album of the Year cover all the bases, from the silly Bootsy (on “Chicken & Fries”) to the sexy Bootsy (“Pure Perfection,” which uses a delivery that Bruno Mars calls “the Bootsy bedroom voice”) to the social commentary of “Tonight We Rise.”
“I think that one’s really gonna be important,” says Collins. “I speak up and speak out in a positive way that's not clobbering anybody over the head but just lightly letting people know that we are the ones and we have to do something. We have so many problems with each other that for me now, it's all about finding ways of helping people deal with what's to come—not just what's happening right now, because this is small potatoes. We're really getting ready to dive into the deep.”
Times are hard, and Album of the Year Number One Funkateer is here to remind us that when the going gets tough, what we need is Bootsy, baby. “This whole groovement is for everybody to know that we funk together,” he says. “Funk ain’t just a smell, funk is our survival. Everything is so messed up, anything could happen at any given time. So the funk is trying to let everybody know that we need to come together as one, in all of our communities and all the countries.
“It's my duty to do my duty,” he adds, “so I keep throwing it out there. Manure is what makes the shit grow. That's what the funk is. If you ain't got no funk, you ain't growing nowhere.”
Talking about his new Album of the Year Number One Funkateer leads Rock and Roll Hall of Famer Collins to revisit the most pivotal moment in his legendary career, when James Brown hired the Pacemakers—the band led by teenage Bootsy, born October 26, 1951 in Cincinnati, Ohio, and his brother Catfish—to replace his backing group in 1970.
“I understand now why we were really important at that particular time for James Brown,” says Collins. “It wasn't just the music. It was because we were lit up, and I understand that more now. With the young artists that are really on fire, I get lit up, and it reminds me that you don't have to just stand around and not be feeling it, you can be absorbing all this fresh, new energy. I get off on that. I guess you can say that I moved from being a player and now I'm a coach. I want to be looked at as a help, a mentor, somebody they can look up to and trust. That's my goal.”
Renamed the J.B.’s, the Collins brothers’ band helped Brown create such intense masterworks as "Get Up (I Feel Like Being A) Sex Machine," "Soul Power," and "Talkin' Loud and Sayin' Nothing." After meeting George Clinton, Bootsy aligned his “space bass” with the Parliament-Funkadelic universe, playing on most of their landmark albums over the next decade and co-writing such classics as "Up for the Down Stroke," "Tear the Roof Off the Sucker (Give Up the Funk)," and the chart-topping "Flash Light."
He also led the side project Bootsy’s Rubber Band, recording multiple gold-certified albums and the Number One R&B hit “Bootzilla,” and began contributing to recordings by artists including Keith Richards, Iggy Pop, and Herbie Hancock. When Rolling Stone put together their list of the Greatest Bassists of All Time, Bootsy was ranked in the top five.
So in addition to working with young artists like Barbara Teleki (whose blazing guitar rips up “Barbie T & Me”) and the mysterious Bootdullivan, Collins brought in some other legendary contributors to help him mix things up on Album of the Year, including longtime friend Dave Stewart of Eurythmics.
“I asked Dave if he would be interested in collaborating,” says Collins, “and that sparked the first vibe of, yeah, I can stretch out—I can make some rock and funk and merge that together with some hip-hop. That's what we did on the first single, ‘The Influencers.’
“Then on ‘Satellite,’ I heard him playing acoustic guitar and that put me in the right mood,” he continues. “Okay, this can be, like, a real song from Bootsy. I usually don't do real songs, I guess that's part of my thing, but that one and ‘Alien Flytrap’ brought me back to why people do songs with a form and a structure and this time, I wanted to.”
The album also reunites Collins with Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, and tha Dogg Pound, all of whom helped keep the P-Funk flag flying by mutating the sound into the West Coast G-Funk era. “Even before we knew each other, we were drawn to each other,” says Collins. “They'll never forget, and we'll never forget them, because they kept the fire burning. It's like we're each other's keeper. They can call me, I can call them, whatever you need, I'm there.”
On “I Am A.I.,” Collins takes on the most controversial technology of our time, embracing artificial intelligence as only Bootsy can. “I always look forward to whatever new is coming,” he says. “That’s the only way I can expand and continue to evolve. Putting up roadblocks is what old people do. So, yeah, I want to mess with it—I want to experiment with it now, so I don't get lost when the real sauce comes and be left out of the whole thing. That's probably why I'm still around, because I refuse to just give up and say since that's coming in, I'm going out. It's coming whether you like it or not, so I'd rather learn about it and get involved.”
This open-minded attitude has helped Collins reach new generations for more than five decades. He collaborated with dance superstars Deee-Lite on their 1990 smash “Groove Is In the Heart,” provided the lead vocal on Fatboy Slim’s Grammy-winning 2000 hit “Weapon of Choice,” and acted as the narrator on Silk Sonic’s 2021 platinum album An Evening with Silk Sonic (he even gave Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak the name for their project).
The seventeen tracks on Album of the Year cover all the bases, from the silly Bootsy (on “Chicken & Fries”) to the sexy Bootsy (“Pure Perfection,” which uses a delivery that Bruno Mars calls “the Bootsy bedroom voice”) to the social commentary of “Tonight We Rise.”
“I think that one’s really gonna be important,” says Collins. “I speak up and speak out in a positive way that's not clobbering anybody over the head but just lightly letting people know that we are the ones and we have to do something. We have so many problems with each other that for me now, it's all about finding ways of helping people deal with what's to come—not just what's happening right now, because this is small potatoes. We're really getting ready to dive into the deep.”
Times are hard, and Album of the Year Number One Funkateer is here to remind us that when the going gets tough, what we need is Bootsy, baby. “This whole groovement is for everybody to know that we funk together,” he says. “Funk ain’t just a smell, funk is our survival. Everything is so messed up, anything could happen at any given time. So the funk is trying to let everybody know that we need to come together as one, in all of our communities and all the countries.
“It's my duty to do my duty,” he adds, “so I keep throwing it out there. Manure is what makes the shit grow. That's what the funk is. If you ain't got no funk, you ain't growing nowhere.”
