“Sex Machine” Brown was one of the first songs recorded with his new band, the JB. Compared with its 1960 successes soul as “Papa Got A Brand New Bag” and “Cold Sweat” is remarkable for the de-emphasis of the winds. Instead, the song revolves around the obsessive riffs Bootsy Collins and Catfish played brothers on bass and guitar, and Jabo Starkson drums, along with the call and response interaction between Brown and Bobby Byrd song.
The original version of the single “Sex Machine” begins with a brief spoken dialogue between Brown and members of his band, which has been re-created (with slight modifications) in live performances:
“Fellas, I’m ready to get up and do my thing! (Yeah! That’s right! Do it!) I want to get into it, man, you know? (Go ahead! Yeah!) Like a, like a sex machine, man, (Yeah!) movin’, doin’ it, y’know? (Yeah!) Can I count it off? (Okay! Alright!) One, two, three, four!”
The song is free-form texts consist largely of urging Brown to ”get up / stay in the scene / like a sex machine”, Byrd set with shouts of “up to”. The piece is harmonically static, as well as move to the subdominant on the bridge.
In 2004, ”Sex Machine” number 326 on Rolling Stone magazine list of 500 greatest songs of all time has been classified.