The Funk Master Flexes

For Damon Riddick, funk is no laughing matter.

IMAGE: Mathew Scott

Dam-Funk didn't sign up to be anyone's savior.

About a decade ago, when the 44-year-old producer and multi-instrumentalist born Damon Riddick finally decided to make a go of the music career he'd previously carried out only in his bedroom and anonymous session gigs, all he wanted was for his electro-fied brand of funk to find an audience.

But funk, on the whole, was in dire straits. James Brown was dead, and Sly Stone wasn't entirely alive. Rick James' legacy had been reduced to a couch-stomping caricature, George Clinton wasn't doing much with his emeritus status, and "Uptown Funk" was years away from ubiquity. With no one stepping up to relight the torch, the idiom withered into parody, becoming the stuff of Afro wigs and platform shoes and pimp-and-ho parties.

With 2009's Toeachizown, Riddick emerged as the hero the genre needed. Rocking Locs and a Superfly hairdo, a drum machine in one hand and a keytar in the other, he introduced the Pitchfork generation to the rubbery rhythms and fluorescent synths that were the soundtrack of his youth in Pasadena, Calif. Suddenly, funk had a new ambassador. It's a role Riddick has accepted. But he didn't ask for it.

"I never self-proclaimed myself anything," he says by phone from L.A. "I would never describe myself as a savior. But I guess I've just repped it so hard that people might make that assumption."

Whether he campaigned for the position or not, in the time since arriving on the scene, Riddick has undoubtedly become the leading emissary of what he calls "modern funk." He's recorded album-length collaborations with Snoop Dogg and singer Steve Arrington, formerly of seminal funksters Slave. He toured with his longtime idol, Todd Rundgren. And he's seen his style incorporated (he says "copied") by new-jack up-and-comers. It's a much different life than he was living before, working day jobs at OfficeMax and the Red Cross, and uploading tracks to Myspace on his lunch breaks.

That's probably why, when he discusses his new album, Invite the Light, it almost sounds like he's talking about his debut. While Toeachizown served as a hefty introduction—in vinyl form, it took up five LPs—Riddick considers Invite the Light to be his first complete artistic statement, distilling the professional highs and personal hardships of the last six years into a broader message about staying positive in a dark world.

"I didn't want to make a jerk-myself-off record, where it's all me, me, me," he says. "I said, 'I want this to be a more universal thing, where anybody listening can apply it to them.'"

As an autobiography of influence, though, Invite the Light shows there's more to Dam-Funk than the music he's literally made his name on. As a kid, Riddick listened to Kiss and Rush as much as P-Funk, and as an artist, he's shown as much kinship to lo-fi pop weirdo Ariel Pink as Snoop, both of whom appear on the album's stacked guest list, along with Q-Tip, Flea of Red Hot Chili Peppers, Jody Watley and Riddick's mentors, Leon Sylvers III and IV.

At points, Riddick dips into deep house ("O.B.E."), jazz fusion ("Floating on Air"), silky R&B ("Glyde 2nyte") and, on the Pink collaboration "Acting," experimental fuckery. It all comes back to funk—and there's plenty of the smooth-gliding bangers Riddick is known for, too—but he proves how elastic the definition is, and how far he can stretch it as a producer.

At over 90 minutes, Invite the Light, like its predecessor, is probably too dense to bring about a second coming of funk in the mainstream. But then, Riddick never called himself a messiah. He is, however, a damn good advocate. And that's one title he seems to have no problem embracing.

"€œI'€™m just trying to continue funk, that'€™s the whole thing,"€ he says. "€œI'€™m trying to give more respect to the music, because it'€™s been relegated to comedy stuff. What I've been trying to do is continue funk in a more respectful light, which it deserves."

SEE IT: Dam-Funk plays Doug Fir Lounge, 830 E Burnside St., with Bobby D, on Tuesday, Sept. 8. 9 pm. $13 advance, $15 day of show. 21+.

Willamette Week

Willamette Week’s reporting has concrete impacts that change laws, force action from civic leaders, and drive compromised politicians from public office. Support WW's journalism today.