A very insightful friend of mine (who is also an OKP but no longer discusses this kind of stuff here due to the attacks of the D stains) recently told that D'Angelo's band plays Funk like "a group of Beta males."

I understood what he meant. Regardless of what your offstage personality might be, when you get on that stage or that studio to play Funk, you'd better find your inner Alpha and let your big hairy balls SWANG, y'know?

One of the things that makes Pino such a respected session man (especially among rock and pop acts) is the fact that he has solid chops, he anchors the music with a distinctive voice, and he never gets in the way.

He doesn't try to upstage anybody, he sits respectfully behind the groove and does his thing.

But in funk, the bass is actually kind of a LEAD VOICE, man. The bassist needs to show out a bit, make his presence known.

Pino's sound is very warm, soft and round. But you want your Funk bass to be a little sharper around the angles.

I know he's heavily influenced by Jamerson (the greatest bass guitarist of all time imho) and even though Jamerson usually had that kind of warm fullness to his voice, he still brought some THUD to it. And he knew how to work the angles:

Even Paul McCartney (another Jamerson apostle) gets funkier than Pino, I think. Though Pino might be a much better bassist than him. But Paul isn't scared to show his ass, so to speak.

Now, none of this directly answers why Pino seems not to shine on bass solos… but in way it does. His persona as a player is to really sit in the back and not hotdog. Which is admirable in a lot of musical contexts… but not when you're trying to do something funky.