Here's an excerpt from a 1998 washingtonpost.com article
FACES IN THE CROWD (By Todd Buchanan)
"When Parliament-Funkadelic founder George Clinton uttered, "What's hap'nin' CC?," on his 1975 album "Chocolate City," he might as well have said, "Watson, come here." Clinton's cool, didactic diatribe, buoyed by five minutes of chitlin-cleaning funk, became the allegory that linked black Washingtonians regardless of caste, class or politics. Even before it Clinton put a beat to it, Chocolate City was a metaphorical utopia where black folks' majority status was translated into an assertion of self-consciousness, self-determination and self-confidence.
Walk up to any black person who was in D.C. in the '70s and ask if they remember Chocolate City. If they stare at you blankly or mention Hershey, Pa., you know you are dealing with a mutant strain of squareness or, God forbid, a 'bama-an individual rank and unrepentant in his or her backwardness. But the reaction is likely to be a smile and shared memories of Parliament-Funkadelic, the struggle for home rule, whist games and the hand dance called the bop. People might talk about old hairdos, blowout kits, the Flagg Bros. shoe store on 10th and F, Chuck Taylor sneakers, quarter parties, waist parties, graduations at Constitution Hall, the back of the bus on the X lines and picnics at Hains Point.
Chocolate City was a cultural muscularity flexing itself in images like Gaston Neal and the New School of African American Thought hosting Sun Ra in the middle of 14th Street. It was Robert Hooks and the D.C. Black Repertory Theater. It was Shirley Horne, Buck Hill and Carter Jefferson on sax, Bobby Sanchez on trumpet and Fred Foss on alto at Twins. It was Bill Harris on guitar at the Pigfoot, Butch Warren on bass anywhere; it was Chuck Brown at the Maverick Room on Wednesday night; Billy Stewart at the Koko Club at 8th and H; Trouble Funk at the Coliseum, Experience Unlimited at the Panorama Room, and Gil Scott-Heron's "H2O Watergate Blues" in regular rotation on black radio. It was a pop cultural expression of hope..."