Electric Miles grabs us in three ways: musically, symbolically, and politically. Musically, because Miles was channeling Jimi Hendrix, Sly Stone, and the tearing noise at the edge of a James Brown scream, while sounding nothing like any of them. Symbolically, because the music represented creativity at full tilt, at a pitch of invention almost indistinguishable from the destruction (aesthetic and, as it also turned out, personal) necessary to establish its conditions. And politically, because Miles was a militantly autonomous black artist, a whitey-scorning, Uncle Tom–excoriating, no-shit-taking man of his time–and this music, above all, was his statement.
An interesting overview of the time when Miles Davis discovered electricity. It’s not his most accessible music, and it took me a long time to appreciate, but I could some of the recordings from that period – In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, and others – as some of his best work.
Source: The Tranquility of Miles Davis’s Electric Period – The Atlantic