Music Reviews: Deep Funk

Many classic albums are lauded as “singular” and “groundbreaking,” but after a while don’t really sound like it, because everyone afterwards did it, or we realize that someone lesser-known did it six months earlier. Yet 52 years later, Sly & The Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On remains as singular and confounding as ever; nothing remotely like it existed before, and nothing since has done exactly what it does. It remains impenetrable and unique: while its elements have scattered throughout popular and underground music since, Sly Stone's early 1970s work operates in a manner that’s impossible to plagiarize because exactly what makes it work is much harder to pinpoint.