Sly & the Family Stone: A Whole New Thing : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

Sly Stone, at one time the San Francisco Bay Area's top rated rhythm and blues disc jockey and also a former A&R man for a now defunct local label (Autumn), once composed a song, with Tom Donahue, called "The Swim." Sly Stone is well-based in composition and production and he does have "a whole new thing."

The record represents the Bay Area's very first rhythm and blues group to go national. It reflects a combination of San Francisco's 'new thing' and some standard R&B techniques, an approach which is interesting but not entirely effective. None of the tracks particularly stand out as strong. The production—and it is more a production than a performance—is still in the experimentation stage and has not yet come to a satisfactory conclusion.