The Funk Box
Of courseThe Funk Boxis kick-ass party music--put "Sex  Machine," "Brick House," "One Nation Under a Groove" and "Hollywood Swinging" in  the same set, and that pretty much goes without saying. But its chronological survey of funk's evolution through the '70s also frames the dialectical struggle between the music's two main schools--theJames Brownstyle (hard, sharp, built around drum-and-guitar polyrhythms) and theP-Funkstyle (goofy, squishy, putting all its weight behind ultraheavy bass)--along with the way both schools dealt with the emergence of disco. The set also reveals how the party-time atmosphere of the earliest funk hits gradually evolved into the social consciousness ofCymandeand theO'Jays, and then back to the hedonism ofFatbackandZapp. All the big funk stars are here, but the compilers have mercifully gone for as many lesser-known floor-fillers as warhorses:Rick Jamesis represented by "You and I" instead of "Super Freak,"George McCraeby "I Get Lifted" instead of "Rock Your Baby." The set also includes a lot of forgotten wonders and DJs' secrets--when's the last time you heard "The New Birth" or "Pleasure"? You can treatThe Funk Boxas an introduction to funk, as a textbook on how popular music reflects mass culture, or even as the source material for pretty much every hip-hop sample ever. Or you can just put it on and dance your brains away.--Douglas Wolk