Atomic Dog
by George Clinton
No Daw It's Old School Bangers
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No Daw It's Old School Bangers 〰️
We all know that American singer and producer George Clinton is the funkiest person in the universe. This musical genius turned 80 this year, and we want to celebrate his legacy and music.
Among all the zillion influential tracks he created, we picked "Atomic Dog," a futuristic electro-funk jam released in December 1982 as a single, also available in the album "Computer Games." The song reached the first position on the Billboard US R&B Chart in the same year. This classic funk tune is all about Dogs, used here as a metaphor. Dogs are always going after cats like men are always going after women. It's like an instinct for them.
“People have a double attitude about dogs. On the one hand, dogs are supposed to be man’s best friend, but when we do someone wrong, we say we treat them like a dog; we dog them out. Dogs express human nature better than we think because they can be loyal and friendly, but they can also be nasty and beastly.”
When you hear this song, you immediately think about how funky this is, but you also think about west coast hip-hop. It has the same vibe as many G-Funk classic hits. This song inspired a generation of hip-hop producers and laid the fundamentals of an entirely new genre called G-Funk!
It also reflects the technological advancement made by humans at that time. It's a perfect blend of electronic music, represented here by sequenced machines and synthesizers and infectious funky grooves played by humans.
Before telling you the story of how this song was created, we need to go back to 1981: an awful year for the ParliaFunkadelic leader. The label Uncle Jam records founded by Clinton in 1980, went bankrupt. They planned to release the successful Roger Troutman's Zapp first album with the label, but it then got sold to Warner Bros, becoming a top-selling album. The label then closed in 1981 due to a significant financial loss (It briefly resurrected in 1983 for a P-Funk All-Stars album).
Clinton at that time got blocklisted by many record labels because he was having a lot of trouble with drug addiction and had some legal disputes about copyrights. He did not score a hit for multiple years to make things worse. Although Clinton was strong and persistent, in late 1981, he was about to give up. Then he met a radio DJ named Ted Currier, who believed in Clinton and helped him re-launch his career.
At the beginning of 1982, together with keyboardist David Lee Spradley and guitarist Garry Shider, they began their first session. They played for many hours with a drum machine, recorded 6 minutes of it on tape, and decided to put the tape backward. Once they heard it, they immediately felt this sounded very special and unique, so they kept the beat playing on reverse. Spradley then created the bassline using both Minimoog and Prophet5 synths.
Both Clinton and Shider wrote the uber-catchy song lyrics. Clinton was not in the studio during the session, so Garry went to pick him up at the Hotel close by. The king of funk was pretty drugged-out (Clinton was used to working in these conditions, as many hits of Parliament-Funkadelic were created while on acid) and entered the studio feeling very anxious and fearing that his career was over.
He was so high he could not even stand in front of the microphone, so they had to help him. Dr.Funkenstein finally sang the lyrics while Garry did the background vocals - those "A-to-mic dooog…"
The next day George came back to the studio and wanted to sing his part again, but the song was complete.
G-Funk producers got inspired by Atomic Dog and many other P-Funk hits. You can easily hear it in many songs of the genre. A clear example is Snoop Dogg's 1993 debut single and the dog-themed Videoclip "What's My Name?" produced by the infamous Dr.Dre. You can hear multiple samples taken from "Atomic Dog" and a bassline taken from Clinton's Funkadelic hit "(Not Just) Knee Deep."
"Atomic Dog" is one of the most influential techno and hip-hop songs. It became a cult classic that inspired generations of music producers and helped revamp George Clinton's career. It's such a catchy cool song that I'm sure the first time you hear it; it's gonna stick with you forever!
