This concept album is often rated among the best Parliament-Funkadelic releases, and was the first to feature horn players Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley, previously of James Brown's backing band the J.B.'s.

I was a big fan of Star Trek, so we did a thing with a pimp sitting in a spaceship shaped like a Cadillac, and we did all these James Brown-type grooves, but with street talk and ghetto slang.

"[11] Journalist Frasier McAlpine stated: "As a reaction to an increasingly fraught 1970s urban environment in which African-American communities faced the end of the optimism of the civil rights era, this flamboyant imagination (and let's be frank, exceptional funkiness) was both righteous and joyful.

"[11] On release, Rolling Stone called the album a "parody of modern funk" and stated that "unlike the Ohio Players or Commodores, the group refuses to play it straight.

"[18] In a positive review, Village Voice critic Robert Christgau stated that Clinton "keeps the beat going with nothing but his rap, some weird keyboard, and cymbals for stretches of side one," and described "Give Up the Funk" as "galactic.