8. James Brown
You have to have James Brown in this list; he invented funk. It’s a different style of music and nobody had heard anything like it before. There’s an African feel to his music and whether it’s on purpose or whether he felt it, I don’t know. I’ve been to Africa a few times and James Brown and Bob Marley are viewed as gods out there. There’s some great Nigerian music out there that’s been influenced by James Brown and it’s utterly fantastic. It’s like taking coals to Newcastle and then taking them back again.
James Brown has that connection back to Africa and his music is all built on rhythm. A lot of music is built on melody but James Brown is built on rhythm. Even his vocals are rhythmic. And every grunt that he makes is a fuck grunt, and that’s great. And it’s amazing to hear that when it’s played on the radio because it’s so primal. It’s sex on the radio.
