Funky Worm – Ohio Players – Released January 16th, 1973 – Westbound Records
Funky Worm is the first single release from the 1972 album Pleasure, by the Ohio Players.
This hugely influential funk and soul band came to prominence in the 1970s releasing a string of platinum and gold records.
Many seminal hiphop producers, would have grown up with their music and, as a result, the Ohio Players soon became one of the most sampled bands in hiphop.
And of all of the songs from their extensive back catalogue, the one that’s been sampled the most is Funky Worm.
This quirky, synth-heavy number had a very distinctive sound which proved especially popular in the 1990s and would eventually become synonymous with the west coast g funk sound.
It’s since been used by everyone from Ice Cube to Kris Kross, and Snoop Dogg to Will Smith.
So, given all the g funk anniversaries I’ve been writing about lately, it made sense to do an article on Funky Worm for this, the 51st anniversary of the single’s release.
A Pleasurable Release
Pleasure was released in December 1972, the second in a trilogy of albums released on Westbound records, those three being Plain, Pleasure and Ecstasy.
(See what I did there by the way? That’s headline writing at its finest and it’s why they pay me the big bucks.)
All three Westbound album covers famously featured the same female model, with her iconic shaved head situated in a variety of suggestive poses.
Fairly mild by today’s standards, sure, but keep in mind we’re talking about an all-black band during the Nixon administration here where funk, kink, gender fluidity and black empowerment weren’t exactly high on the national agenda.
The album covers were purposely designed to grab attention and drive sales, but that was always just the bait on the hook (wow I’m on fire today huh?) before the music reeled you in.
Pleasure was my first introduction to the band and it’s as good place to start as any, since you get a broad overview of the band’s musicality and an overwhelming desire to hear more.
As the penultimate track of nine on the album, Funky Worm stands out in stark contrast to the slinky piano funk of Paint Me that precedes it and the achingly beautiful album finale, Our Love Has Died.
Coaxing The Little Worm Out
Here comes Granny to tell us all about the Funky Worm.
It’s an actual worm who lives six feet underground but he’s a magic worm, I suppose, with special abilities.
Plays guitar without any hands (pretty good I might add) and when he wants to get down, he comes out of his hole and sounds like, well, pretty much every hiphop track from the early 90s…
That’s the main sample right there, and for the sake of simplicity let’s call that the “worm sample”.
There’s another secondary sample at around the 1:30 mark, which is the secondary sample which we’ll henceforth refer to as the “wibbly sample”. (Because of the wibbly synth sound.)
Those are the two main parts of the track which tend to be sampled, though other elements of this track have been sampled too.
(There are also some differences between the album and single versions for any hiphop helminthologists who wish to dive even deeper down the funky wormhole.)
Funky Worm was the brainchild of the band’s keyboard player, Walter “Junie” Morrison, who would later go on to work with George Clinton.
The signature “worm” sound, soon to become the staple of gangsta grooves everywhere, was originally created using an ARP Pro Soloist synthesiser.
Wiggling The Worm
Kicking things off on the west coast with NWA, we got a two-for-one here, so let’s start with the most blatant one, Dopeman.
The sample pops its head up again briefly on Gangsta Gangsta, arriving towards the end of the track just as Easy E makes an appearance.
Thus, a precedent was set for Funky Worm usage in west coast gangsta hiphop, particularly by the alumni of Compton University.
The first of whom was Ice Cube, who employed the sample to devastating effect on the ruffneck hiphop classic, Wicked, from the 1992 album, Predator.
Predator is Cube’s best album and remains one of my top three favourite hiphop albums of all time.
And if you ask me, Wicked is one of the finest tracks on it, an out an out banger, like 9 pounds of shaving powder mixed with Semtex. This one epitomises gangster rap for me and served as my first ever introduction to the world of the Funky Worm.
But Ice Cube’s not done with the wiggly one just yet, the following year he released Lethal Injection and unpacked another trunk of oligochaetic funk.
And if there’s one both emerging worms and west coast gangstas have in common, it’s that they need to keep an eye on the sky for danger…
Around the same time (late 1993) Death Row Records released Doggystyle, the debut album by Snoop Doggy Dogg produced by Dr Dre.
As I mentioned previously on last November’s Backspins review, Dr Dre’s The Chronic may be the album that “invented” g funk, but Doggystyle was the album that truly perfected it.
It’s worth noting, too, that rather than sampling as previous, Dr. Dre opted to recreate the many of the original synth elements instead, which made things sound a lot smoother.
Case in point here on Serial Killa you’ll immediately recognise the Funky Worm melody, but this time it’s recreated in the studio by Dre himself (apparently with a Moog synthesizer instead of the ARP used on the original.)
Course I’m going to bet that for many people their first introduction to the Funky Worm was back in ’92 when the radio kept playing Kris Kross.
Remember Kris Kross?
I’m imagining half of you staring blankly and the other (older) half are currently facepalming at the memory.
To the latter half I apologise for invariably causing to chorus to Jump start autoplaying in your head, and for those of you too young to experience it at the time, Kris Kross were two young teenager rappers who wore their clothes backwards as a gimmick.
“Don’t try to compare us to another bad little fad”, said Daddy Mac (or was it Mac Daddy?)
Which is ironic because that’s exactly what we all did.
It’s a pity the primary media focus was always on the duo’s obverse fashion sense, because these kids clearly had talent and listening back I gotta say the production on this is tight.
It’s more hiphop than pop, albeit a guaranteed funky earworm that went to number one in America, Canada and Australia, as well as here in Ireland.
But, although they would release three albums in total, Kris Kross peaked with Jump.
And I always got the sense that the music biz just squeezed them as much as they could when they were young, as they often tended to do.
Another radio-friendly hiphop hit from around the same time was Boom! Shake The Room by Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince. This one came out in the summer of 93 and went to number one in the UK, Ireland, Spain and Australia.
Boom doesn’t use that same “worm sample” like all these previous tracks though, instead this one uses what I referred to earlier as the “wibbly sample” – that’s the wonky, slightly detuned arpeggio which appears at around 1:30 on the album version of Funky Worm.
You can hear it on the “boom shake, shake shake the room” chorus, tinkling away in the background, and when it drops you won’t have Kris Kross in your head no more.
Skipping back to 1992, here’s the Beastie Boys with Funky Boss, from their third album Check Your Head.
This track uses teeny snippets of the track, though they’re more deeply embedded this time around. And there’s so much going on here they’re easy to miss.
Listen closely and halfway through the first chorus and you can hear small snippets of “granny” alongside slices of the “wibbly sample”. Also, you can thank me for putting Funky Boss in your head now, Will Smith’s gone and Kris Kross is now a distant memory.
Jumping back to 1993 again, here’s east coast heroes Naughty By Nature and The Only Ones which uses a short Funky Worm loop on the chorus.
Not that Westside Connection had much love for the east coast back in the day. Surprise surprise, here’s Ice Cube dusting off the ‘Worm one again in this NYC diss track from 1996. As with the Beasties, this one’s easy to miss but you can hear it faintly in the background of the “New York, New York” hook.
It’s fair to say that after 1993 the sample’s popularity began to trail off but continued to pop up on occasion, like on this 1999 jam from the late, great DMX who jumps straight in with the wibbly sample.
And to round it off our hiphop highlights on a gangsta tip, here’s a 2002 track from Scarface, note the little wibbly sample snippet appearing throughout…
Now if we’re talking 90s music (which is a lot on this blog) then one thing we can be certain of is that, any major trends, sounds and samples in US hiphop will have invariably crossed over to UK jungle and drum n bass too.
Let’s start with one of the original jungalists, Ray Keith. We got a two-for here, with both the “worm” and “wibbly” samples repeating in succession on top of a rolling old skool jungle loop.
And finally, here’s a franticly squirming Funky Worm slightly smeared in Vicks this time as Luke Vibert (using two pseudonyms simultaneously) chucks the Amen Break, Altern 8, Bass Master Warriors and the Ohio Players into a massive crazy blender.
And the result is every bit as manic and chaotic as it sounds…
Like 9 Cans Of Shaving Powder
Funky Worm is now over half a century old and still as funky as ever.
Moreover, it continues to influence musicians and producers to this day.
Discovering the Ohio Players for the first time and exploring their back catalogue is a rapturous experience for any true music lover.
And the reason why I did it, well, to quote Ice Cube, “gangster rap made me do it.”
Because for my generation, especially those of us born outside of the US, hiphop music allowed us to discover a submerged treasure trove of funk, soul and jazz music. Music which predated our birth and which we initially experienced through sampling.
And when you’re young and geeky you naturally want to know everything you can about the music you love. And finding all those sample sources was a whole lot harder back then before the internet.
Nowadays you can just Google it.
Which brings me to my next point – this is by no means the definitive list of tracks that sample Funky Worm, merely a few carefully curated highlights.
I’d be wary of any list that claims to be definitive since, like the Amen break or the Fresh scratch, Funky Worm is so ubiquitous at this point it’s impossible to know for sure how many times it’s really been sampled.
And even if you did, there’s always going to be some kid somewhere loading it into their sampler for the first time, ready to put a whole new spin on it.
Results are certain to vary wildly.
So, brace yourself for a deluge of new variants; Tech Worms, Trap Worms, Latin Worms, Afro Worms, Big Room Worms and various uncategorisable tracks packing plenty of Big Worm Energy…
Because something tells me, if we somehow manage to make it that far, future generations will still be bumping the Funky Worm in 2073.
In the meantime, you can always enjoy the band’s back catalogue, the perfect salve for our modern woes and also learn more about the Ohio Players in this documentary: here