Let's Take It to the Stage

Music and lyrics

Let's Take It to the Stage is a funk rock album. The closing track "Atmosphere", which begins with a monologue by George Clinton about "dicks and clits", appropriates an extended organ coda from Johann Sebastian Bach. The album's title track has been sampled on several hip hop hits, including Brand Nubian's "Slow Down", Public Enemy's "Bring the Noise", and N.W.A's "100 Miles and Runnin'".

Critical reception

In a contemporary review, Billboard magazine called Let's Take It to the Stage a collection of Funkadelic's "usual good mix of soul and jazz sounds, mixed in with singing and street raps", citing the title track and "Baby I Owe You Something Good" as highlights. In The Village Voice, Robert Christgau said Funkadelic finally does on record "what they've always promised to do in the hype—make the Ohio Players sound like the Mike Curb Congregation." In a 1981 review, he wrote that despite the group's "disturbingly occultish bent", he is "inclined to trust the music, which is tough-minded, outlandish, very danceable, and finally, I think (and hope), liberating", later writing in Blender that it was their "tightest album ... all 10 tracks rock on."

AllMusic's Ned Raggett found Let's Take It to the Stage to be one of the band's most comical records with "more P-Funk all-time greats as well, making for a grand balance of the serious and silly." Sasha Frere-Jones, writing in The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), said it was "a summing-up of everything Funkadelic had done to date, and is still their most playable record." He felt that, although Clinton's "sexual politics weren't at their best" on tracks such as "No Head No Backstage Pass", the album is exemplary of the band's musicianship.

Personnel