Five Fingers of Funk, also stylized as 5 Fingers of Funk, is an American hip hop group that formed in 1992 and is currently based in

Portland, Oregon Portland (, ) is a port city in the Pacific Northwest and the largest city in the U.S. state of Oregon. Situated at the confluence of the Willamette and Columbia rivers, Portland is the county seat of Multnomah County, the most populous co ...

Pete Miser Peter Aaron Ho (born February 3, 1971), known by the stage name Pete Miser, is an American Hip Hop rapper and producer living in New York City. Biography Originally from Portland, Oregon, Miser is involved in the hip-hop scene in the Nort ...

met drummer Talbot Guthrie and together they formed what originally was a nine-piece group. They grew to be a ten-piece group that performed at venues such as La Luna,

Satyricon The ''Satyricon'', ''Satyricon'' ''liber'' (''The Book of Satyrlike Adventures''), or ''Satyrica'', is a Latin work of fiction believed to have been written by Gaius Petronius, though the manuscript tradition identifies the author as Titus Petro ...

Roseland Theater The Roseland Theater, sometimes called the Roseland Theater and Grill, is a music venue located at 8 Northwest Sixth Avenue in the Old Town Chinatown neighborhood of Portland, Oregon, in the United States. The building was originally a church, c ...

X-Ray Cafe The X-Ray Cafe was a small music venue in Portland, Oregon, United States from 1990 to 1994. An all-ages and community-oriented club, the X-Ray played a "heavyweight role in shaping Portland's underground culture," fostering such musical acts as Ell ...

, and Berbati's Pan. The group is an example of hip hop from Portland, where it's generally considered lacking.

, the lead

vocalist Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or without ...

described the Portland hip hop culture as "dope, but it has such a marginalized status". The members take influence from old-school rap and

Bootsy Collins William Earl "Bootsy" Collins (born October 26, 1951) is an American bass guitarist and singer. Rising to prominence with James Brown in the early 1970s, and later with Parliament-Funkadelic, Collins established himself as one of the leading n ...

funk Funk is a music genre that originated in African American communities in the mid-1960s when musicians created a rhythmic, danceable new form of music through a mixture of various music genres that were popular among African Americans in the m ...

and differ from their peers by generating sounds from instruments instead of electronic sampling. The group has also been described as combining the sounds of

James Brown James Joseph Brown (May 3, 1933 – December 25, 2006) was an American singer, dancer, musician, record producer and bandleader. The central progenitor of funk music and a major figure of 20th century music, he is often referred to by the honor ...

Sly Stone Sylvester Stewart (born March 15, 1943), better known by his stage name Sly Stone, is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer who is most famous for his role as frontman for Sly and the Family Stone, playing a critical role in the ...

, and

Funkadelic Funkadelic was an American funk rock band formed in Plainfield, New Jersey in 1968 and active until 1982. The band and its sister act Parliament, both led by George Clinton, pioneered the funk music culture of the 1970s.John, Bush. Funkadeli ...

with 90s hip hop. Sounds are created with instruments such as

keyboards Keyboard may refer to: Text input * Keyboard, part of a typewriter * Computer keyboard ** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping ** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware Music * Musi ...

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other Percussion instrument, auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair o ...

bass Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in the bass range: ** Bass (instrument), including: ** Acoustic bass gui ...

horn section A horn section is a group of musicians playing horns. In an orchestra or concert band, it refers to the musicians who play the "French" horn, and in a British-style brass band it is the tenor horn players. In many popular music genres, the te ...

, and

turntables A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...

. The group toured for several years on the west coast from California to British Columbia and played with acts like

Fishbone Fishbone is an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1979, that plays a fusion of ska, punk, funk, metal, reggae, and soul. AllMusic has described the group as "one of the most distinctive and eclectic alternative rock bands of the late ' ...

and

Maceo Parker Maceo Parker (; born February 14, 1943) is an American funk and soul jazz saxophonist, best known for his work with James Brown in the 1960s, Parliament-Funkadelic in the 1970s and Prince in the 2000s. Parker was a prominent soloist on many of B ...

. Eventually, Miser left the group in 1999 and moved to Brooklyn, New York to become a solo artist. The group reunited in 2020 for the single, "Who's Gonna Take the Weight" to inspire voters in the American elections of 2020. It was the first time the band recorded together since 1998. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Pete Miser wrote a series of songs about his hometown, Portland, Oregon. Working with the original band members and other Portland hip hop artists they remotely recorded and produced Kill Sound, releasing it in May of 2023 on

Kill Rock Stars Kill Rock Stars is an independent record label founded in 1991 by Slim Moon and Tinuviel Sampson, and based in both Olympia, Washington, and Portland, Oregon. The label has released a variety of work in different genres, but was originally known ...

. The band reunited for a show and played sections from Kill Sound At Portlands Music Millenium on May 13, 2023.

Discography

Studio albums

* ''Slap Me'' (1995) * ''About Time'' (1998) * ''Twisted and Lifted'' (2001) * ''Portland Say it Again''(2023)

References

{{Reflist Musical groups from Portland, Oregon Musical groups established in 1992 1992 establishments in Oregon