Icon: Sly and The Family Stone

By Michelangelo Matos, eMusic Contributor

Maybe the most startling thing about Sly & the Family Stone's peak is how short it was. A mere four years elapsed from the Bay Area funk-rock septet's debut, A Whole New Thing, to the radical masterpiece, There's a Riot Goin 'On, which was recorded mostly by Sly alone. Granted, this arc coincided with the greatest mass-societal changes of 20th-century America, but it tells us plenty about Stone's singularity nevertheless. As a top-rated Bay Area DJ… more »