Sly Stone's Music Formed The Backdrop To Several Hip-Hop Classics
Sly Stone, a legendary musician who helped propel funk to its elevated heights in the realm of Black music, has died. Hip-Hop artists of various eras have sampled Sly Stone's work over the years, and we've got a playlist highlighting some of those audio classics.
As Hip-Hop Wired reported earlier, Sly Stone, born Sylvester Stewart in Denton, Texas, passed away Monday (June 9) at the age of 82. After establishing his roots in the Bay Area as a musical prodigy, Stone ventured into becoming a front-facing artist with his Sly and The Stones in the 1960s with the late Cynthia Robinson, the trumpeter who was a founding member of Sly and the Family Stone, the band that catapulted Stone into the annals of music history.
Alongside fun pioneers such asJames Brown and Parliament-Funkadelic, Stone and his band enjoyed a successful run of album releases extending into the late 1970s. Stone's life was captured in the 2023 biography, Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin), written with Ben Greenman, featuring a foreword from Ahmir 'Questlove' Thompson. Thompson also produced the stirring 2025 documentary centered on Stone's life and legacy, Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius) .
Hip-Hop artists such as LL Cool J, Queen Latifah, The Jungle Brothers, Public Enemy, and scores more dug into the crates to grab bits of Stone's music to form the backdrop of their works. Below, we've got a handful of those songs featured in the playlist below.
Long live Sly Stone. May he rest powerfully in peace.
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Photo: Michael Putland / Getty
Sly Stone's Music Formed The Backdrop To Several Hip-Hop Classics was originally published on hiphopwired.com
Samples 'Trip To Your Heart.'
Samples 'Dance to the Music.'
Samples 'You Can Make It If You Try.'
Samples 'Sing A Simple Song.'
Samples 'Everyday People.'
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He was a musical prodigy; by age seven, Stone was proficient at keyboards, and by 11, he played guitar, bass and drums. He sang gospel in church with his sisters and joined high school bands. Stone studied music at California's Solano Community College, worked as a disc jockey and became a songwriter and record producer. He played keyboards for Marvin Gaye. By 1966, Sly and the Family Stone had emerged, with brother Freddie on guitar and vocals, sister Rose on keyboards, and Vaetta on background vocals. White musicians Greg Errico on drums and saxophonist Jerry Martini joined them at a time when such integration was rare. Their first album fell flat. But when influential music executive Clive Davis urged Stone to make a more commercial record, the band stormed up the charts in 1968, with Everyday People reaching number one. 'We got to live together,' Stone belted out. 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