In 1971, Marvin Gaye released what many consider to be his masterwork, “What’s Going On?” By November of the same year, Sly Stone, who died this week, seemed to pose an answer: “There’s a Riot Goin’ On.”

 

In 1971, Marvin Gaye released what many consider to be his masterwork, “What’s Going On?” By November of the same year, Sly Stone, who died this week, seemed to pose an answer: “There’s a Riot Goin’ On.” The idealism of the 60s was dead, and with its death came the harsh realities of the new moment: political assassinations, expanded police violence, a shifting civil-rights movement, and a sense of disillusionment that seemed to haunt Stone as he searched for a purpose beyond hippie-culture stardom. The lyrics on “Riot” were not necessarily pessimistic, and they were not all explicitly political, but they were tinged with a kind of cynicism that seemed to be overtaking the country.

“It would be easy to draw parallels with our current political moment,” Hanif Abdurraqib writes. “It would be easy to tell you that I had the N.B.A. Finals on my television the other night but hardly watched the first half because I was frantically scrolling the internet, trying to keep track of the resistance movement unfolding in Los Angeles, and another one unfolding upon a small boat, stocked with humanitarian supplies, headed for Gaza. I find it more challenging, and perhaps more useful, to ask an inward-facing question, which gets at the deeper indictment that Stone articulated on ‘Riot’: When will you realize that your country is a myth? And, if you already have, what might you do next?” Read his remembrance of the musician at an inflection point in his career and political life.