The ’90s would be a tumultuous and crazy decade for Clinton: He would be canonized as a forefather of hip-hop, given the Otis Day & the Knights role in frat-laffs flick PCU, and invited to collaborate with everyone from Ice Cube to OutKast. But he was still struggling to get his due royalties from managers and working his way through a crack habit that somehow never stopped him from being productive. All this, and he was using his famously open-minded musical sense to engage with sounds that didn’t always fit preconceptions of what P-Funk was — which led to contemporary R&B production tricks, further use of drum machines and synth-horns, and sampling which often did their self-referencing tendencies one better by actually looping pieces of their old work. Dope Dogs is what happens when all those new ideas are coursing through the minds of Clinton and his crew, but haven’t entirely solidified into something strong just yet. Not even after multiple attempts at it.

Initially released in Japan, this bewildering record wound up with three different configurations on three different continents; it’s generally agreed that the UK and American versions are better than the Japanese one, but there’s not enough difference between the three to really mess with the rankings here. The important thing is that in any configuration, it’s the most dedicated conceptual record of P-Funk’s post-’81 stretch. In short, it starts with the premise of drug-sniffing dogs that become addicted to the product they’re trained to search for, and gets even heavier on the canine metaphors from there on out. That Clinton finds a lot of ways to apply his Big Book Of Dog Puns to an itinerary that covers government conspiracy (New Jack Swing-turned-batterram “U.S. Custom Coast Guard Dope Dog”), psychological manipulation (the Pavlovian club anthem “Just Say Ding (Databoy)”), and the cosmic origins of existence (the Blackbyrd shredathon “Dog Star” (Fly On)”) is inspiring, even if there’s at least a few too many butt-sniffing metaphors.

That the jokes get a little redundant after a while is only part of the problem; it’s the budget-minded production flourishes that muddle things up. “Back Up Against The Wall,” “Sick ‘Em,” and “I Ain’t The Lady (He Ain’t The Tramp)” mix off-the-charts virtuosity with the kind of budget-Bomb Squad breaks and turn-of-the-’90s synths that make otherwise heavy-bouncing cuts sound a little too cheap, and the whole album suffers from the price of recording in a period where analog warmth was considered less important than digital efficiency. Look past that, and dive deep into the sometimes-wandering but frequently freaky lyrics — including some close-falling-apple hip-hop verses from Clinton’s son Tracey “Trey Lewd” Lewis — and it’ll feel a bit more forgivable.