Why is George Clinton, he of Parliament and Funkadelic fame, still a popular draw on the college music circuit when contemporaries like the Ohio Players, the Commodores and Earth Wind & Fire are relegated to the oldies tours?

"Our whole mission was to be here 25 years after we started in the '70s, to be here like Muddy Waters and Lightnin' Hopkins were in the '60s," Clinton (who plays March 15 at the Belly Up Tavern in Solana Beach) said by phone last week.

"We wanted to make sure we were accepted like the current whatever is going on," he said.

To that end, Clinton said he has constantly listened to the latest trends in popular music, adopting elements of them and adapting to the ongoing musical canvas that is his P-Funk universe.

"Whatever kind of new music comes along that parents hate, that old musicians hate, whatever they hate is going to be the next thing!" he explained of how he finds new sounds to incorporate into his music.

While most people might think that rap and hip-hop represented a break with the funk sound that defined popular black music in the 1970s, Clinton emphasized several times that rap is the natural progression of funk, which itself grew out of 1960s' R&B.

"Funk is the DNA for rap and hip-hop," he said. "I knew that from the late '70s early '80s."

Clinton said he first heard rap from his bands' roadies in the late '70s. He said there were two guys from Brooklyn he particularly remembered, playing with portable tape decks and chanting over it before a show.

"So many people were into it and knew it as a cult in New York and Chicago. In Chicago, it was called house music, but it was similar. They would take two tape recorders and loop it and talk over it."

It was the changing face of radio that led to the development of rap, Clinton said.

"The personalities on radio had stopped," he said. As disc jockeys were allowed to talk less and less, Clinton said the stronger personalities moved from radio stations into the dance clubs.

"The DJs in the clubs were becoming stars, keeping people on the dance floor. Segueing from one record to the other, the DJs would be talking over the top of the record. Rap, to me, was a continuation of the radio getting phased out and the DJs in the clubs becoming the personalities that the radio had been, and then recording it."

Clinton's openness to all things new extends to the world of musical downloads -- legal and otherwise. While record companies are waging war against online downloaders, claiming illegal downloads are costing musicians millions in lost royalty, Clinton said it is the record companies that are shortchanging him over his '70s recordings since reissued on CD.

"It's a new age, and we have access to the whole world now," Clinton said of the Internet. "The percentage of people who download for free will definitely be made up for by the fact that you have access to the entire planet. … We make more money when we sell on iTunes.

"The whole concept is changing -- the record companies had their shot at raping everybody, anyway. That's the second step from the drug game, record companies -- it's one step up, or maybe a step down!"

Perhaps because of his open-minded attitude toward new developments in both technology and music, Clinton said he often plays college venues he finds that a huge swath of his audience is younger.

But he said that goes back to the 1970s, when he was trying new things and having to convince his band members to forget their own training and simply look to the audience's reaction to decide if it is working or not.

"I just put it on the records and as long as the kids' heads were bouncing, I figured it was OK."

George Clinton and Parliament/Funkadelic

When: 9 p.m. March 15

Where: Belly Up Tavern, 143 S. Cedros Ave., Solana Beach

Tickets: $38-$40

Info: (858) 481-8140

Web: www.bellyup.com