In his many albums with Parliament and...

In his many albums with Parliament and Funkadelic, funkman George Clinton perfected the ideal of the hermetic concept LP, a sealed, self-referential universe that made consistent internal sense even while it was incomprehensible to anybody not in on the joke. Nobody may have known what, say, “The Motor Booty Affair” really meant , maybe not even Clinton, but that’s part of what made it so groovy.

The closest hip-hop equivalent to Parliament is, of course, Oakland’s Digital Underground, which in last year’s “Sex Packets” not only sampled as much Clinton as X-Clan and De La Soul put together but also created a hermetic, many-peopled universe of its own. The new one’s even better.

“Sons of the P” is an even more explicit homage to Clinton ( P standing for Parliament), all slickly booming bass, character voices and left-field hooks, strange aquatic creatures and recording studios deep beneath the surface of the Earth, all underlaid by infectious, syncopated beats.

As with a Parliament album, the grooves are so well-constructed that you can dance your way through two-thirds of the thing before you realize it’s mostly filler . . . and by that time, you don’t care at all.

* * * 1/2 DIGITAL UNDERGROUND “Sons of the P”

Tommy Boy