Maggot Brain

The cover depicts a Black woman's face emerging from (or being consumed by) earth and soil. Her mouth is open in what could be a scream, a gasp, an ecstatic cry, or a death rattle. Her expression is raw and primal, and the juxtaposition of a human face with the organic matter of the ground creates an image that is both disturbing and strangely beautiful.

The image was attributed to Joel Brodsky, a prominent music photographer who had previously shot Jim Morrison's iconic "Young Lion" portrait. The concept was driven by George Clinton, Funkadelic's visionary bandleader, who wanted artwork that matched the album's fusion of psychedelic rock, soul, and philosophical exploration.

The album's title track is one of the most revered guitar performances in music history. George Clinton told guitarist Eddie Hazel to play as if he had just received news that his mother had died, and then learned it was not true — to play the journey from the deepest grief to the most transcendent joy. Hazel recorded the solo in a single take, reportedly under the influence of LSD. The ten-minute instrumental — recorded with Hazel's guitar and Billy "Bass" Nelson's bass, with the rest of the band's parts later erased by Clinton — is a raw, unfiltered emotional journey that matches the cover's primal intensity.

The cover's imagery connects to themes that run throughout Clinton's work: the relationship between Black identity and nature, the primal forces that lie beneath civilized surfaces, and the idea that transcendence requires confrontation with darkness. The buried/emerging woman could represent rebirth, death, the Earth itself, or the subconscious mind breaking through to the surface — all interpretations that align with the album's psychedelic-spiritual content.

The cover is one of the most striking in rock history — simultaneously beautiful and horrifying, much like the music itself. It helped establish Funkadelic's visual identity as raw, psychedelic, and rooted in African American spiritual traditions. The album is considered a masterpiece of psychedelic soul/rock and the title track has been cited by countless guitarists as one of the greatest recordings ever made.