'There's A Riot Going On' is the most important funk album of all time, the masterpiece of the wild, wicked and whacky genius that is Sly Stone. It has provided ideas and inspiration for every funk act from Parliament to Earth, Wind & Fire ever since it first appeared in 1971. James Brown had stripped funk down to the bare essentials, but Sly Stone was to abandon the rock funk of his 60's recordings and produce a music that all duelling guitars and snaking horns coming together in a lithe mutation of funk.
'There's A Riot Going On' concerns itself, like so many other records of the time, with life in the urban, black America. Most other artists would make a record chronicling the horror, the protest and demands that black America was making for itself. Sly was different. Sly celebrated the whole damn mess by holding a mirror up to black America. Sly courted controversy by using the Stars & Stripes for the cover art, reminding the listener that America was a land of opportunity for all. There were complaints that the album didn't contain a titular track so to get around this Sly had the sleeves printed up with 'There's A Riot Going On' 0:00 mins among the track listing.
Sly was to stagger from one chaotic episode to another and was lost to music for a time through his over reliance on pharmaceutical stimulants. He was never again to match what he had achieved with 'There's A Riot Going On', more's the pity.
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