I have so much love to express for this video that I do not know where to begin. Let’s start with the New York City in the early 70’s setting. It looks so much like New York today except not quite. The biggest difference I can spot is a crowd of people gathered to see what is being filmed in Times Square. I imagine that a modern New Yorker would only be annoyed that his route to Starbucks was obstructed. The period billboards are interesting too, of course.
The thing that I really love is that the action of the video really doesn’t have much of anything to do with the lyrics of the song. ICYMI, the song is about a woman who sells herself to get money to support her children. Not a happy song, and especially strange for a funk band. Then again, Funkadelic was a different kind of funk band. Their leader, George Clinton, also led the somewhat more pop-friendly Parliament. Funkadelic, it seems to me, had a bit more of an edge and may have been willing to sacrifice some of its audience in the pursuit of making a point.
The point here being, it seems, that poor people have to make some pretty horrible choices that lead them into some pretty dark places. It’s all kind of fun and weird and scary all at the same time. Like the video, because I don’t know what those masks are all about. I do think it is fortunate that they gave that white boy a guitar to play, because he was otherwise useless. And as much fun as the scene in Times Square was, I think it ran on a bit too long. The piece de resistance, however, is the ten seconds of nothingness at the end. Genius.