As the creative mind behind Parliament-Funkadelic, keyboardist extraordinaire Bernie Worrell’s influence on funk and hip hop is incalculable. His musical ear, legendary arrangements and compositions for P-Funk have been sampled and studied by hip hop producers ad nauseum (namely, Prince Paul).
Paul and Worrell, along with long-time Prince Paul collaborator Newkirk, form the trio known as Baby Elephant and their supergroup collabo project entitled Turn My Teeth Up! is as left-field, layered, funky, and quirky as you would expect from a pair of geniuses like this.
The album opener, “Baby Elephants-N-Thangs”, starts out with a percussively beautiful piano over a prototypical boom-bap beat. Easy enough, right? But the song, with vocal accompaniment by George Clinton, quickly morphs into a synthesizer-driven romp that makes you wonder how you even got to that point. “How Does Your Brain Wave”, with psychedelic vocals from Talking Heads alum David Byrne, and “Skippin Stonze”, featuring vocals from experimental multi-instrumentalist Gabby La La, sit in the middle as the album’s sonic pinnacle.
Bernie’s keyboards (or “teeth” as he refers to them), whether piano, organ or a variety of synthesizers, are a majority of the story on this album. On one particular skit, George Clinton reminisces on making music with Parliament-Funkadelic: Bernie could layer “100 keyboards and they wouldn’t get in each other’s way”, Clinton recalls. There is no better way to describe Worrell’s technique and the sensibilities of this album. Not to be outdone or overshadowed, the Prince Paul-led production is very much steeped in traditional boom-bap. The chemistry between these two sounds, however, is so rich and the product, creative. The album can seamlessly transition and flip everything from ragtime to reggae, sometimes on the same track.
Prince Paul’s stories of cutting school as a kid to listen to Parliament records ring true on this very album. The pupil-to-teacher role on Teeth is reminiscent of the will.i.am/Sergio Mendes collaboration project of 2006, only Paul’s credibility and grasp of funk and psychedelic textures are more profound than the former’s grasp of Bossa Nova. This understanding makes Turn My Teeth Up! a creative gem masterminded by an off-kilter pair who are smack dab on the same page.
