Sly & The Family Stone, There's a Riot Goin' On

Sly & The Family Stone's fifth album typically gets described in bleak terms, and certainly, compared to the exuberance of earlier tracks like  "Dance to the Music, " "Everyday People," and "Stand!" it's not exactly chock-full of party anthems. In some ways, though, this album was the group's funkiest up to that point. The groove is subtle, but it runs much deeper, appropriate for a release that hit the streets in 1971, at the end of a celebratory era and the begining of another, more conflicted period in both the band's career and the American pop landscape. The cultural critique coming from Sly was unexpected, but in retrospect, it's completely in line with what an artist who so accurately reflected the climate around him was bound to produce.