Remembering Sly Stone with Music Historian Rickey Vincent

11th July 2025

We’re joined by music historian and professor Rickey Vincent to talk about the legacy of Sly Stone. He talks to us about what made the funk icon so special and why there’ll never be another like Sly again.

Episode notes

(Photo by Central Press/Getty Images)

Sly Stone died last month at the age of 82. Sly founded and sang with the funk act Sly and the Family Stone, one of the biggest and most consequential funk bands in the history of modern music. If you know Sly for anything, it’s for hits like “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)” “Dance To The Music,” “Family Affair” and about five dozen more. Between 1968 and 1973, Sly and the Family Stone went on an unparalleled run.

And then… the faucet started to shut off. He cut a handful of other records in the  late 70s and early 80s, wouldn’t show up to shows and eventually quit performing altogether. He eventually faded from the public eye altogether. By 2011, blogs reported that Sly was living out of a van in LA. Sly was a hard guy to reach later in his life, and an even tougher guy to read. However, when he passed last month, nobody talked about the dropped gigs or the lurid tabloid stories. We all listened to his music, we danced, we cried and we felt better.

Rickey Vincent is a music historian who’s made a career out of studying funk and soul music – including the work of Sly Stone. Rickey teaches at UC Berkeley and he’s also a DJ on KPFA up in the East Bay. He joined us to chat about Sly Stone, his legacy, what made him special, and why there’ll never be another like Sly again.

In this episode...

Senior Producer
Producer
Maximum Fun Producer
Video Editor
Maximum Fun Production Fellow

Guests

  • Rickey Vincent

About the show

Bullseye is a celebration of the best of arts and culture in public radio form. Host Jesse Thorn sifts the wheat from the chaff to bring you in-depth interviews with the most revered and revolutionary minds in our culture.

Bullseye has been featured in Time, The New York Times, GQ and McSweeney’s, which called it “the kind of show people listen to in a more perfect world.” Since April 2013, the show has been distributed by NPR.

If you would like to pitch a guest for Bullseye, please CLICK HERE. You can also follow Bullseye on Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook. For more about Bullseye and to see a list of stations that carry it, please click here.

People

Senior Producer

Producer

Maximum Fun Producer

Video Editor

Maximum Fun Production Fellow

How to listen

Stream or download episodes directly from our website, or listen via your favorite podcatcher!

Share this show

New? Start here...

Liked Remembering Sly Stone with Music Historian Rickey Vincent? Listen to these next...