With the current protests in relation to the death of George Floyd, America is seeing something unprecedented. For the first time, all 50 states are protesting with the goal of police reform. Since everyone has access to a camera phone, the injustices have become more available than ever before, streaming on Twitter as peaceful protestors share their stories in Instagram stories and reposting funds to help the homeless Black trans community. There is a concerted effort that hasn’t been seen like this, at least not since the 1970s when there was another notorious Republican president in office, coming off of a decade that ended with the ongoing war, the decline of Civil Rights, and a growing amount of despair that America was falling apart.
It’s an energy that you can’t understand unless you lived through it. While films can capture the ideas and imagery that made these moments essential to change, there is nothing like having that surprise, when the events happen and you don’t have an easy answer for what’s about to happen. Maybe Richard Nixon would complete his second term after winning the presidency in a landslide. Maybe the Civil Rights would have a new leader on par with the slain Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. You can’t know what that’s like unless tomorrow isn’t certain, and in June of 2020, that feels like one of the biggest examples of this (oh yeah, did I mention there’s a pandemic still in effect?).
That is why listening to protest albums feel important at this moment. Not only of this moment but throughout history to understand how this frustration has lingered throughout decades. While most are likely to remember Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” as the definitive protest album of 1971, there was another that was far messier. Sly and the Family Stone’s “There’s a Riot Goin’ On” came out six months after Gaye’s, and has been hailed as the darkest album to inspire the hip-hop movement of the decade ahead. It was also considered one of the first examples of the funk music that would be more popularized by artists like George Clinton and The Ohio Players.
Prior to the album, Sly Stone was associated with the hippie movement, writing songs that were political in nature, but had this underlying optimism to them. Their 1969 album “Stand!” was an example of them using their upbeat style to fight for change. Along with an appearance at Woodstock that year, they were building towards something greater.
The biggest issue was that the 60s came to an end with such a tragic blow that it was hard to be happy about everything. You couldn’t blame Stone for being more critical and political because everyone around him was. He was said to have befriended The Black Panthers around this time and introduced The Family Stone to a diet of cocaine and PCP. They weren’t quick to release new music, with many wanting their post-Woodstock success to include an album in 1970. While there was the single “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” in 1969, the world was still two years off from “There’s a Riot Goin’ On.” Given that Stone created the album largely on his own while high, nobody really expected the album to be a masterpiece.
Much like The Beatles with “The White Album,” there is something timeless about an album clearly designed at a time when there’s a rift in the band. There’s very little on this album that screams collaboration, at least not with The Family Stone. On the album’s first single “Family Affair,” Stone would call on sister Rose Stone, Billy Preston, and Bobby Womack for the recording. If there was any collaboration with The Family Stone, it was minimal and recorded separately.
Seeing as the album was described by Miles Marshall Lewis as “the death of the sixties,” it made sense that everything felt so murky. This wasn’t a clean production, with most of the instruments being blurred together due to excessive use of overdubbing, erasing, and the use of a drum machine that he programmed manually to lay down beats. “Family Affair” would be the first single to feature a drum machine. Like everything else with the album, Stone wasn’t a fan of Epic Records using the song as the lead single. Then again, its title was the perfect metaphor for a man who was losing connection to those around him quickly, symbolic of the Black experience in an America that was refusing their rights all over again. No wonder it was said that Stone recorded all of the vocals while lying in bed.
That makes the opening of the album all the more ironic. “Luv N’ Haight” features prominent use of the line “Feel so good inside myself, don’t want to move.” It can be seen as a literal song about love and hate, finding the internal struggles of Stone trying to conjure up the will to speak out. The repetition is hypnotic, finding the grooves reminiscent of jam band sessions becoming more funk-oriented, adding a bass-groove underneath that reflects a heart in stasis, doing everything to beat back to life.
Lyrically, the album wasn’t that dense and featured a lot of repetitive use of concepts. Songs like “Just Like a Baby” and “Poet” reflect this in cutting the concepts down to their simple core. What makes babies peaceful? What makes a poet want to speak up? By getting to the heart of these concepts, they can be seen as messages about the Black identity from birth, needing to find ways to express themselves. Considering that it was 1971, it was more important than ever for Stone to speak up for what was important to him, leading to passages from “Poet” like:
My only weapon is my penAnd the frame of mind I'm inI'm a songwriter, A poet
While the lyricism begins simple, there is a birth of ideas that begin to take place on “Family Affair,” and ones that begin to make clear what Stone’s intents have been. Suddenly the verses and choruses become fuller, presenting clearer and more thought-out ideas that grab the listener, lulling them from the dreamlike state that we’ve been in and now are about to engage with Stone the individual, the man who’s so mad and isolated from the world around him:
One child grows up to beSomebody that just loves to learnAnd another child grows up to beSomebody you'd just love to burn
Given that he’s coming off of a decade where the band was more associated with free love, the choice to comment on the disparity between white privilege and Black struggle was a brutal shift, but one that needed to be said. By comparing these two children to each other, there is a call for peace that plays on the injustice in the streets. By suggesting that one child wants to learn, it also creates this implicit divide in how white and Black citizens are seen, with the former being more intellectual and the latter caricatures of bad minstrel shows. The song goes into a variety of scenarios that all have a maternal underlying, suggesting that the children should be equal.
Finishing out Side One is “Africa Talks to You (The Asphalt Jungle),” which is the closest that the album comes to a full-on funk jam. It’s because Stone is reaching beyond the American perspective and asking about the Black identity through history, with ties back to the homelands in Africa. It’s a call for the roots to return over a seven-minute groove that allows the imagery of chopping down a tree for manufacturing, sent away from their base to become a product for someone else. The Asphalt Jungle is the city where they live, needing a reminder of their organic roots.
The next song, “There’s a Riot Goin’ On,” is a song that doesn’t really exist. While it’s on the tracklist, there is nothing there. For those who buy the LP, the running time is zero seconds. YouTube lists it as four seconds, which fly by so quickly that it’s a literal blink and you’ll miss it moment. Some suggest that this is a reference to Sly and the Family Stone causing a riot that caused several injuries when they ended up performing late one time.
But that wasn’t the case. It was plain and simple. For Stone, it was zero seconds because he personally believed that riots shouldn’t exist. Despite being the title track, its lack of existence meant that it kept questions alive as to its true meaning. It was definitely an angry album, and one that sought to explore the Black identity as something beautiful, but it was also the record of an addict whose life was falling apart, who lacked collaborators on the majority of his work.
If there’s any insight into the record’s meaning, it’s in the artwork that finds something resembling the American flag. There are a few significant changes, however, such as the color choices. According to Stone, the colors were symbolic. They were black (absence of color), white (every color), and red (blood, which is what everyone has). He also changed the stars into suns, which he felt were more apt to the American experience of something that’s always looking over you. The inner artwork would feature events relevant to the moment. Together this created a perfect summary of Stone’s vision.
The latter half was where things got weird, with the song “(You Caught Me) Smilin’” being about Stone getting high. It was the most optimistic song on the record, sounding relaxed.” While songs like “Time” and “Brave & Strong” reflected personal desires of being free of the brutality in the world around them, he was also showing something more complicated in the freedoms of Black citizens. “Brave & Strong” used the cries of the mother, as if trying to protect the youth from the troubles of the world.
With that said, “Spaced Cowboy” is a fascinating choice to follow “(You Caught Me) Smilin’” because it’s a hallucinatory mix of ideas. Whereas the album has largely been focused on funk-oriented instrumentations, this is a moment where Stone recalls Jimmie Rodgers, known more commonly as “The Yodeling Cowboy,” whom he imitates repeatedly in the song as he explores getting high:
Everything I like is niceThat's why I try to have it twiceYodel-ayde-lay-da-day
It’s a goofy song that’s surreal by the fact that it incorporates country music in such strange ways, alluding to Stone being so drugged out of his gourd that he looked like a pimp. What follows in “Runnin’ Away” is a song set to blues and gospels rhythms, returning to an identity that is more familiar to Stone. It’s a return to familiar themes of struggle that he has on this album, proving that while he’s allowed to get high, it’s only a distraction from his other issues that he faces.
The final song “Thank you for Talking to Me Africa,” which repurposes “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” in a slowed down measure as Stone sings through a seven-minute jam that amounts to self-acceptance. It’s one asking the world to sing and join in harmony, rambling on as a moment of joy in this life. What it proves is that while there’s endless chaos in the world, there’s still something to be thankful for, that life will go on:
Youth and truth are makin' loveDig it for a starterDyin' young is hard to takeSellin' out is harder
Despite ending on this high note of joy, the record’s critical nature made many see it as Sly and The Family Stone turning into more of a cynical act. It was true that this was the shift towards a more political and funkier sound. They were going to embrace their own identity and not cater to an image that was more Top 40. While the album would sell over a million copies, its initial reception was divisive, especially considering that it was a grand shift from the style that they had been known for. They were an optimistic band before, and now they were angry and cynical, willing to reflect on the injustice in the world.
It was considered the darkest record to influence the hip-hop movement, and you can see why. While it had all of the trademarks both in musicality and lyrical components, it was done with such a harsh view of society that it’s easy to see why it felt dangerous. Sly Stone clearly was in a dark place at this time, and it’s a miracle that the band ever recovered after he took carte blanch over their albums.
Still, it was a sign that even those with the happiest of outlooks could grow agitated under the right circumstances. Because the world was shifting so radically due to so many tragedies, the choice to mark this as commenting on “the death of the sixties” feels apt. A new era needed to start, and one that lived up to the promises that they were fighting for with the Civil Rights. It wasn’t going to be pretty and manufactured. It was going to be murky and raw. Even then, Stone’s message was loud and clear both in the symbolism of the album cover and in his music’s simplicity and accessibility.
So as The George Floyd Protests continue, it’s important to understand that this may be the death of a moment in time. Anyone who speaks out has the chance to make their voice heard more than ever, and hopefully, they will make a statement as timeless and influential as “There’s a Riot Goin’ On.” Even “Family Affair” feels relevant in painfully obvious ways that a 49-year-old song shouldn’t. Still, the need to fight the good fight lingers on, and thankfully there’s music to express that anger in effective and unifying ways, even if they’re coming from a man who felt isolated from the world he lived in.
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