Last Thursday, Junie Morrison, the founder of the funk band the Ohio Players and member of Parliament-Funkadelic, passed away. Grammy Award winning singer, Solange took to her website (Saintheron.com) to pay homage to the legend, whom she also revealed, inspired her song “Junie” from her critically acclaimed album A Seat At The Table.
I remember the first time I heard Junie Morrison‘s “Super Spirit“…Q-Tip played it for me one night in his studio in Jersey. No song had ever made me feel quite like it. It tapped into places and spiritual frequencies that I couldn’t even put into words. I listened to it on loop for an hour, each listen hitting me deeper and deeper.
Solange continued,
His music found me during a really hard time. During a time of a lot of self-doubt about my own music and career. Any time those feelings would rise, I’d put on “Super Spirit” and try and to manifest it into that moment.
I had just finished my album and started mixing when one day I walked into the studio and heard Raphael playing this drum and bass loop. He was playing it for a friend, but I begged to take it home and write to it. I started sketching out “Junie” with Junie Morrison heavy on my mind that very night.
She concluded,
I wrote the song to honor the brilliant Junie Morrison and the impact his work and story had on me, while wanting to challenge my own relationship with “sharing your magic.” The more I learned about Junie, the more I learned how much of his gift he shared through his musical contributions to others; how we have all in some way or another been touched by his contributions to funk music, and about his wealth of inspiration to other musicians. The more he came up, the more I heard the words underrated and under-credited. But the greatest lesson I learned about Junie Morison is that the magic was endless….and the truest testament to real authentic magic….is that it can’t be made….. it just is. When that kind of magic exists, it will happen again and again, no matter what the potion of players are. He had it in his hands. He was very appreciated. He was the “Super Spirit” indeed.
Take a listen to “Junie”
