On the One — James Brown's rule for his band (Clyde Stubblefield, Jabo Starks, Jimmy Nolen, Bootsy Collins): whatever anyone plays, everybody hits beat 1 together, hard, and then gets out of the way. Every part here starts with an accent on 1 and spends the rest of the bar in sixteenth-note syncopation. The kick plays 1, the "a" of 2 and the "and" of 3; the snare keeps the backbeat; the hat ticks eighths and opens on the "and" of 4 to point at the next One.
Nolen's guitar is a chicken scratch: the ninth chord stabbed on 1, then up-strokes, muted strokes (x) and short downs in sixteenths. The clavinet-style keyboard stabs a three-note ninth voicing on 1, the "a" of 1, the "and" of 2, the "e" of 3, beat 4 and the "a" of 4. The bass states the One and walks a syncopated root–fifth–flat-seventh under it. One chord, two bars, no changes — that is the point.
Listen for beat 1 as the only moment where everything agrees. Practice: mute everything but the drums, clap the One, then add one part at a time and make sure your One never moves.