Think back to when you first realized a record you loved was built on somebody's sacrifice. Not the sacrifice of struggle-and-triumph that gets the Grammy speech.
The quiet kind, where a woman gave everything to a machine and walked away with barely her name on it. That is the story Seth Neblett has been carrying his whole life.
His mother, Mallia Franklin, was Parlet's front woman, the only member formally contracted by Casablanca Records, and the woman George Clinton's team privately described as the reason Parlet existed at all. She brought Bootsy Collins into the family.
She recruited Walter "Junie" Morrison. She was, as multiple people in Seth's book confirm, the connective tissue behind nearly every P-Funk hit from 1975's "Give Up the Funk" through "Atomic Dog" in 1983.
And she died in 2010 at 57 without the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame or the Grammys ever mentioning her name. Seth Neblett spent twenty years making sure that didn't stand.
The result is Mothership Connected: The Women of Parliament-Funkadelic (University of Texas Press, 2025), a wide-ranging oral history that puts Mallia, Debbie Wright, Shirley Hayden, Dawn Silva, and Lynn Mabry center stage, finally. In this episode, Seth sits down with DJ Sir Daniel and Jay Ray to walk through what it was like growing up as an only child with Parliament rehearsing in the basement of his grandparents' house in Highland Park, Michigan.
His godfather was Bootsy Collins. His babysitters were members of the Ohio Players.
His grandmother was vice president of the city council and a close friend of Rosa Parks. He is, as Sir Daniel puts it, the best possible version of a nepo kid.
But the book Seth wrote isn't a nostalgia trip. It's a reckoning.
It documents how women, particularly Black women, were systematically frozen out of the money they made, the credit they earned, and the history they helped write. This episode covers the business mechanics that kept Parlet broke while their vocals were everywhere, the "space whorehouse" concept quietly embedded in Parlet's debut album art, how Mallia's advocacy for fair pay eventually got her and the group sidelined, and the chain of connections that runs from Mallia Franklin straight to "California Love." Seth doesn't theorize.
He was there. You can get 30% off a copy of 'Mothership Connected: The Women of Parliament-Funkadelic' at University of Texas Press.
Use the code: UTXPCA until May 31, 2026! Click here: Links to Content Related To This Episode For Research and Context Parliament-Funkadelic - Full Concert - 11/06/78 - Capitol Theatre (OFFICIAL) Why P-Funk’s Women Never Got the Recognition They Deserved Mothership Connected: The impact of the women of Parliament-Funkadelic Chapter Markers 00:00 Intro Theme 00:16 Welcoming Seth Neblett, Author of Mothership Connected 01:45 Jay Ray Reads Seth Neblett's Full Bio 04:00 What Was It Like For Seth Neblett Growing Up? 07:16 Watching Mom Transform Into a P-Funk Superhero Backstage 12:40 An Odd Seed Kid With Parlet Rehearsing in the Basement 16:30 How the Industry Exploited Black Women in the 70s & 80s 21:07 Mallia's Contract and the Hidden Business Behind Parlet 27:42 Space Ships and Space Pimps: The Hidden Meaning in Parlet's Album Art 32:45 How Streaming and Social Media Changed Power for Women Artists 35:43 Famous But Broke: Songwriters Got Rich, Not the Artists 37:00 Protecting Black Music History: The Book as a Permanent Record 38:22 Bootsy Collins Told Seth: You Write It 40:00 Finishing the Book After Mallia Passed Away in 2010 42:17 Mallia Franklin Brought Every P-Funk Hit Maker Through the Door 44:31 Mallia Connects Dr.
Dre and Roger Troutman at Death Row 48:24 The Stories That Didn't Make the Book: 100 Deleted Pages 50:25 P-Funk Demons and Doubters Couldn't Stop the Book 54:02 What Mallia and His Grandparents Would Say About the Book 55:24 Where to Buy the Book and Follow Seth's Work 57:31 Queue Points Sign-Off and Listener Resources 58:51 Outro Theme Support Queue Points By Becoming An Insider: #QueuePoints, #BlackMusicHistory, #PFunk, #MalliaFranklin, #FunkHistory, #MothershipConnected, #BlackWomenInMusic, #MusicArchaeology
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