George Clinton’s Alien Dicks Are the Best Argument Against Cultural Gatekeeping

George Clinton just dropped the most devastating argument against cultural appropriation discourse in a single paragraph.

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Just saw a tweet with a George Clinton talking about how the Beatles were his favorite band, which reminded me of this quote he once gave me https://t.co/ijTYEw6An7

Brian Hiatt @hiattb February 06, 2026

The Godfather of Funk Settles the Debate

When Rolling Stone asked Clinton how he feels about white artists doing black music, he didn’t flinch: “I’d bite off the Beatles, or anybody else. It’s all one world, one planet and one groove. You’re supposed to learn from each other, blend from each other, and it moves around like that.”

This isn’t some naive take from someone outside the tradition. Clinton is Parliament-Funkadelic’s founder, a walking museum of American musical history with a career spanning from 1950s doo-wop to Kendrick-era hip-hop. The Beatles were his favorite band. He “bit off” everyone — and he expects everyone to do the same.

That’s the whole point. Ray Charles made Eleanor Rigby funky. The Beatles made blues rock. Clinton made everything Parliament-Funkadelic. Culture moves forward when people borrow, blend, and build.

The Alien Perspective

Then Clinton pivots to space travel and delivers the punchline: “We gonna be dealing with aliens. You think black and white gonna be a problem? Wait till you start running into motherfuckers with three or four dicks! Bug-eyed motherfuckers! They could be ready to party, or they could be ready to eat us. We don’t know, but we’ve got to get over this shit of not getting along with each other.”

This isn’t just comedy. Clinton and Bootsy Collins claim they had an actual UFO encounter — a light hit the car, a mercury-like substance rolled up the side, and they experienced missing time. According to Far Out Magazine, Clinton’s daughter said they looked like they’d seen a ghost. Years later, he realized hours had vanished.

Clinton believes these visitors might be “our ancestors” — a shared DNA that can bring us together. The cosmic perspective isn’t escapism. It’s a way of seeing our petty divisions for what they are: absurd.

Noah Smith’s Six Reasons Cultural Appropriation Is Great

Noah Smith, the economics blogger behind Noahpinion, has written extensively on why cultural appropriation is actually beneficial. His classic essay lays out six reasons we should celebrate cultural mixing rather than police it.

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The single best quote about cultural appropriation that I've ever seen https://t.co/7e0bgRras9

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 @Noahpinion February 06, 2026

Product diversity: Japanese-Italian restaurants in Tokyo mean more dining options, more fun cities, better lives. It explodes product variety and creates weird hybrids—like mentaiko pasta and California rolls—that no purity-focused culture would invent on its own.” And pasta itself? A failed Italian attempt to copy Chinese noodles. Thank God for failures.

Beneficial mutation: Almost every modern genre of popular music is influenced by blues, jazz, or hip-hop. The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, Sublime, Daft Punk — all “appropriated” from Black American music and created something new. Sometimes mutations are lame . Often they’re revolutionary.

Consumer demand spillover: How many white kids got into rap through Eminem and then discovered Black artists? Elvis probably funneled money to Chuck Berry. Appropriators create gateways to more authentic work.

Immigrant opportunity: Panda Express helped develop a general American taste for “Chinese food” — which created business for authentic Chinese restaurants staffed by Chinese immigrants. Cultural appropriation creates jobs.

Cultural empathy: Some white kids who listened to hip-hop went to shows, saw Black people outside conservative media narratives, and developed actual sympathy for movements fighting for better lives. Smith’s own father got into rock, then blues, then went to clubs in the Black part of town, made friends, and participated in civil rights demonstrations. Without that cultural appropriation, he might have bought the line that Black protesters were thugs.

The Segregationist Logic of “Stay In Your Lane”

If you take anti-appropriation arguments seriously, the logical endpoint is segregation.

Mark Alexander makes this point sharply in his Substack. A drum circle in Vermont was banned from a farmer’s market for playing Jamaican rhythms, at least as one musician tells it. The management said justice was served.

Should Awadagin Pratt be forbidden from playing Chopin? Should Yuja Wang stop performing Prokofiev? If we applied cultural appropriation rules consistently, that’s where we’d end up. Even a white guy couldn’t play Chopin because he’s not Polish. The absurdity compounds.

The “cultural” part is a lie. What’s really happening is segregation by skin color — and the irony is that the loudest anti-appropriation voices tend to be white academics, not the actual artists.

Free Your Mind

Clinton’s philosophy runs deeper than alien jokes. His maxim: “Free your mind and your ass will follow” — which he compares to “Let go and use the Force, Luke.” If your head isn’t right, everything you try to fix will be messed up.

When doo-wop died in the 1960s, he was “sad but excited to see what was next.” You can’t hold on or you become “antique real quick, like the Ink Spots.” Change isn’t a threat — it’s how culture stays alive.

On finding great musicians: “Somebody you can’t control, or won’t do it normal. Anything that gets on your nerves — the parents don’t like, the old musicians don’t like, and kids seem to be liking it — that’s usually the shit.”

Clinton’s optimism is grounded: “Whatever happened, that’s the way it’s supposed to be. You just have to figure your way how to dance your way out of your constriction.”

Culture isn’t a scarce resource to be hoarded. It’s a groove to be shared. Every great musical movement in American history came from people learning from each other, blending together, creating something new. The alternative — cultural segregation enforced by online hall monitors — is both logically absurd and morally bankrupt.

George Clinton has been making this point through his art for 60 years. Now he’s made it explicit: We’re one planet, one groove. As George says, “We’ve got to get over this shit of not getting along with each other.”