99) There's a Riot Goin' On : Rolling Stone

Listen Now
Buy RS cover reprints!
Download the cd!
Buy the album at Rhino.com

This highly anticipated studio follow-up to Sly and the Family Stone's 1969 blast of hope, Stand!, was the grim, exact opposite: implosive, numbing, darkly self-referential. Sly Stone's voice is an exhausted grumble; the funk in "Family Affair," "Runnin' Away" and especially the closing downward spiral, "Thank You for Talkin' to Me Africa," is spare and bleak, fiercely compelling in its anguish over the unfulfilled promises of civil rights and hippie counterculture. "It is Muzak with its finger on the trigger," wrote critic Greil Marcus in Mystery Train. Take that as a recommendation.

Total album sales: 1 million

Peak chart position: 1

Next: Frank Sinatra

Back to RS 500 Albums!
Back to RS 500 Songs!