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Sly & The Family Stone — Just Like a Baby
From the powerful and haunting 1971 album, There’s a Riot Goin’ On, which drops the band’s previous joyful psychedelic soul tone and melodic formula approach, and gives way to a darker, more mature and foreboding funk sound, informed by drugs, paranoia and unfortunate, uncompromised reality. Critically recognized as one of the greatest albums of all time, its influence ranges from Marvin Gaye and Miles Davis to Iggy Pop to pioneering hip hop acts like De La Soul, Beastie Boys, and Afrika Bambaataa, who have sampled their music.
Most of the album was recorded by Sly Stone alone in the studio, sometimes using a primitive drum machine (later on mixing it with Gregg Errico’s live drums), which was unusual to be left on a record at the time, and overdubbing instruments. In fact, the album’s muddy, gritty sound was due in part to this excessive use of overdubbing and erasing parts of the reel-to-reel tapes.
On the introspective, yet political lyrics writer Miles Marshall Lewis wrote: “Never before on a Sly & the Family Stone album were songs open to so much interpretation, and even more so, dripping with cynicism. On the other hand you can hardly hear what he’s saying for most of the album. Like Radiohead’s Kid A or even the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St. more recent to the time, a murkiness in the mix of the record inhibits complete comprehension of the words.”
