Funk, rock and soul maverick Sly Stone died at 82 on Monday (June 9). According to a statement from his family, the Rock and Roll Hall of Famer’s passing came after “a prolonged battle with COPD and other underlying health issues,” while he was surrounded by family and loved ones.
“While we mourn his absence, we take solace in knowing that his extraordinary musical legacy will continue to resonate and inspire for generations to come,” the statement continues.
That legacy is indeed a singular one, and he built most of it with his eponymous ’60s and ’70s group Sly & the Family Stone. With the band, Sly Stone both scaled the greatest heights of Flower Power utopianism and plumbed the lowest depths of Nixon-era disillusionment, with incisive lyrics, brilliant hooks and grooves that could be as lock-step tight or as meanderingly loose as the song called for.
Over the course of their original run, Sly & the Family Stone scored three Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hits, released at least two albums considered among the greatest of the entire rock era, and played one of the signature sets at 1969’s iconic Woodstock festival. Though the band largely fell into disarray in the mid-’70s, and neither the Family Stone or its leader ever were able to quite recapture their peak prominence, the music lived on through subsequent generations — and could be heard sampled and recycled on major hits by Janet Jackson, LL Cool J, Cypress Hill, the Beastie Boys and countless other later acts.
Below, Billboard rounds up our picks for Sly & Co.’s 10 all-time greatest — songs that captured turbulent times and spoke to universal truths, and remain just as potent over a half-century later.
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