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Quoted from the New York Times:

Mr. Brown’s music was sweaty and complex, disciplined and wild, lusty and socially conscious. Beyond his dozens of hits, Mr. Brown forged an entire musical idiom that is now a foundation of pop worldwide.
“I taught them everything they know, but not everything I know,” he wrote in an autobiography.

The funk he introduced in his 1965 hit, “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” was both deeply rooted in Africa and thoroughly American. It found the percussive side of every instrument and meshed sharply syncopated patterns into kinetic polyrhythms that simply made people dance.

His innovations reverberated through the soul and rhythm-and-blues of the 1970s and the hip-hop of the next three decades. The beat of his instrumental “Funky Drummer” may well be the most widely sampled rhythm in hip-hop.