Editing Maggot Brain (section)

==Music and lyrics==
The album opens with a spoken word monologue by Funkadelic bandleader [[George Clinton (funk musician)|George Clinton]], which refers to "the maggots in the mind of the universe".<ref name="fender"/> According to legend, the opening [[Maggot Brain (instrumental)|title track]] was recorded in one take when Clinton, under the influence of [[LSD]], told lead guitarist [[Eddie Hazel]] to play as if he had just learned his mother was dead; Clinton instructed him "to picture that day, what he would feel, how he would make sense of his life, how he would take a measure of everything that was inside him and let it out through his guitar".<ref name=fender/><ref name="Tate">{{cite news |last=Tate |first=Greg |author-link=Greg Tate |date=January 12, 1993 |title=Eddie Hazel, 1950–1992 |work=[[The Village Voice]]}}</ref> Though several other musicians performed on the track, Clinton de-emphasized them in the final mix so that the focus would be on Hazel.<ref name=pop/> Hazel utilized [[Distortion (music)|fuzz]] and [[wah pedal|wah]] effects, inspired by his idol [[Jimi Hendrix]], on the track; Clinton subsequently added [[delay (audio effect)|delay]] and other effects during the mixing process, saying: "I [[Echoplex]]ed it back on itself three or four times. That gave the whole thing an eerie feel, both in the playing and in the sound effects."<ref name=fender/> Critics have described the solo as "lengthy, mind-melting" and "an emotional apocalypse of sound."<ref name="allmusic">{{cite book | last = Bogdanov | first = Vladimir |author2=Chris Woodstra |author3=Stephen Thomas Erlewine
 | title = All music guide to rock: the definitive guide to rock, pop, and soul | publisher = Hal Leonard | date = 2002 | page = 440 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=Bgn9SGmA4dkC&pg=PA440 | isbn = 978-0-87930-653-3}}</ref>

The subsequent five tracks have been described as "sour harmony-group meditations heavy with bass, keyboard and [[class consciousness]],"<ref name="Christgau"/> with the band exploring a "[[Psychedelic rock|psychedelic]]/[[funk]] fusion."<ref name="The Rough Guide to Rock">{{cite book |last1=Grant |first1= Matthew |title=The Rough Guide to Rock |publisher=Rough Guides |page=404}}</ref> "Can You Get to That" features [[Isaac Hayes]]' backing vocal group Hot Buttered Soul,<ref name="Leone"/> and contains elements of [[Country blues|folk blues]] and [[gospel music]].<ref name="Raggett"/> "You and Your Folks, Me and My Folks" explores interracial love and features electronically distorted drums.<ref name="Raggett"/> "Super Stupid" was described by ''[[Pitchfork (website)|Pitchfork]]'' as a "tale of a dumbass junkie set to a tune [[Black Sabbath]] would have been proud of."<ref name="Leone"/> The nine-minute closing track "Wars of Armageddon" has been described as a "freak-out" jam,<ref name="Raggett"/> and makes use of "paranoid, psychedelic sound effects and crowd sounds."<ref name="Leone"/> Popular music scholar Yuval Taylor described it as "a burning hot prefiguring" of the music that [[Miles Davis]] would perform on his 1975 live album ''[[Agharta (album)|Agharta]]''.<ref name=pop>{{cite web |last1=Taylor |first1=Yuval |title=Funk's Death Trip |url=https://www.popmatters.com/funks-death-trip-2496176916.html |website=PopMatters |access-date=May 14, 2020|date=March 23, 2008}}</ref>