Funk has been a euphemism for both stink and sex. But as pure musical expression, it means soul music boiled down to the raw essentials, the grooves and riffs up front. Born in the late 1960s, its fusion of black-power pride, R&B showmanship, and jazz chops has held strong for more than three decades--first as the sound of "urban" America's disastrous '70s, then as the root of all '90s hip-hop.
SLY AND THE FAMILY STONE STAND! (EPIC, 1969) Sly Stone relocated James Brown's new beats from the Deep South to Haight-Ashbury, picking up relatives in Detroit and Memphis along the way. "Everyday People" and "Sing a Simple Song" sport refrains pithy enough for elementary-school sing-alongs, while the starry-eyed "Stand" and the teary-eyed "Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey" hint at contradictions that eventually shattered Sly's pop utopia. ALSO TRY: Funk Box (Hip-O, 2000), four CDs of party starters.
