Maggot Brain by Funkadelic

Maggot Brain, Funkadelic's third album, crawled out of Westbound in July 1971, and it's the sound of the band that started out backing George Clinton's vocal group, the Parliaments, dragging funk somewhere dark, heavy and deeply psychedelic. Clinton produced it at United Sound Systems in Detroit over late 1970 and early 1971, and it was the last stand for the original lineup: guitarist Tawl Ross, bassist Billy Nelson and drummer Tiki Fulwood all left after it came out.

Everybody remembers the title track, and they should: ten minutes of Eddie Hazel's guitar, mostly improvised, weeping and wailing through the haze as if the whole world were ending and he was the only one who noticed. The rest of the record grinds and struts, acid rock with its hips loose. It reached the R&B Top 20, and the critics have kept catching up since: in 2009 Pitchfork slotted it at number 17 among the finest records of the 1970s, and in 2020 Rolling Stone placed it 136th among the greatest albums ever made.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.