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The Herald SC

Funk and circumstance. Music icon George Clinton collects honorary degree at HBCU in SC

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Post and Courier

George Clinton, Emanuel Cleaver headline Clinton College's graduation in Rock Hill

Clinton College in Rock Hill gave an honorary doctorate to funk artist George Clinton, whose great-great-grandfather founded the historically Black college.

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Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette

Names and faces

Musician George Clinton accepted an honorary doctorate degree from the college named for his great-great- grandfather, Bishop Isom Caleb Clinton. "Today in Rock Hill, South Carolina," Clinton College president Lester McCorn said during Friday's commencement ceremony, "Dr. Funkenstein officially becomes Dr. Clinton." Clinton, 82, began his music career six decades ago. He influenced generations with a new genre of soul and R&B while popularizing Afrofuturism and synthesizing new sounds, McCorn said. A long reel of popular songs include the "unofficial anthem of the culture," he said, "One Nation Under a Groove." "Your music became the summons to the dance floor for every event that allowed Black folk to be free to express themselves," McCorn said. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inducted Clinton's Parliament-Funkadelic in 1997. The Hall of Fame describes Parliament-Funkadelic online as the "mind-blowing, soul-expanding musical equivalent of an acid trip." Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2019. "Just keep your eyes and ears open," Clinton said when asked what he'd tell new graduates. "You'll find out something new. That's all you can tell anybody. Just pay attention." With some help from artificial intelligence, country musician Randy Travis on Friday released his first new song in over a decade, an acoustic ballad titled "Where That Came From." In July 2013, Travis was hospitalized with viral cardiomyopathy and later had a stroke. The Country Music Hall of Famer had to relearn how to walk, spell and read in the years that followed. A condition called aphasia limits his ability to speak. Cris Lacy, Warner Music Nashville co-president, approached Travis and asked: "'What if we could take Randy's voice and re-create it using AI?,'" Travis' wife, Mary Travis, told The Associated Press over Zoom last week, Randy, 65, smiling in agreement next to her. "Well, we were all over that, so we were so excited." Lacy tapped developers in London to create two proprietary AI models. Lacy and Kyle Lehning, Travis' longtime producer, chose to use "Where That Came From," a song that Lehning co-produced and held on to for years. After inputting the demo vocal into the AI models, Lehning began to edit and build on the recording with engineer Casey Wood. Mary Travis says the "human element," and "the people that are involved" in this project, separate it from more nefarious uses of AI in music. "Randy, I remember watching him when he first heard the song after it was completed. It was beautiful because at first, he was surprised, and then he was very pensive," she said. "And then he put his head down and his eyes were a little watery. I think he went through every emotion there was, in those three minutes of just hearing his voice again."

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