THE RH FACTOR feat. D’ANGELO / “I’ll Stay”

Ostensibly at least, Funkadelic’s “I’ll Stay” intends to be an R&B slow jam but that plan goes out of the window right away as Eddie Hazel opens the proceedings with his now-trademarked and always-overdriven electric guitar, already in mid-wail. Well, you’re thinking, at least we still have those pretty vocals. Befitting their origins way-back-when as a doo-wop group, George Clinton and the rest of the Funkadelic vocalists begin “I’ll Stay” in flawless multi-part harmony. But P-Funk being P-Funk, that plan goes awry as well. By the end of the tune, it’s hard to even call what’s going on in the vocal booth singing. Try coughing, choking, gasping and grunting. And so it goes. Partially by design, partially by accident and partially by aid of relentless pharmaceutical experimentation, “I’ll Stay” is perfect P-Funk: bizarre, brash and beautiful, in equal parts and all at once. Twenty years down the line, jazz trumpeter Roy Hargrove and R&B singer and keyboardist D’Angelo decided to tackle Funkadelic’s sublime sprawl for Hargrove’s jazz/soul fusion album The RH Factor: Hard Groove. It would’ve been both inadvisable and impossible for Hargrove and Co. to recreate the glorious mess of the 1974 recording. Though they stick closely to the form of the original composition—lyrics, melody, chord changes, etc.—the style is much more subdued. The vocals, for example, are plainer, neither as wild nor as wonderful as the original. The electric guitar, a featured element of the original, is relegated to a relatively brief solo for the remake, and it’s tuned to ‘blues club’ mellow, as opposed to ‘stadium rock’ loud. So, if the updated “I’ll Stay” is both more tame and less brilliant than the original*, why do I like it so much? Simple—they get the groove right. I don’t know how much time Hargrove (trumpet), D’Angelo (Wurlizer electric piano), Jason Thomas (drums), Chalmers Alford (guitar) and Pino Palladino (electric bass) spent getting that groove where they wanted it, but the final product is as good as a slow grind gets: thick as mud and sweet as molasses. Within the first bar or two, the RH boys lock into ‘The One,’ and, like any self-respecting band of P-Funk disciples, they have the good sense to keep it there. Seven minutes in, D’Angelo ad-libs, “I’ll wait right here / I ain’t going nowhere, baby.” It’s hard to tell if he’s talking to the groove or to the girl. —Mtume ya Salaam * Technically, Funkadelic’s version of “I’ll Stay” is itself a cover. It’s an extended and updated version of “I’ll Wait” by The Parliaments, the early doo-wop incarnation of what would later become Parliament-Funkadelic.           Yes—but          Your write up is more interesting than the music. (BTW, I agree with your thesis, just not feeling your examples too tough.) Did anybody cover “Maggot Brain”? I smell a P-Funk week coming up ;->) —Kalamu ya Salaam

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