5. Sly & The Family StoneThere’s A Riot Goin’ On
When I was a teenager, I would go to the library, and borrow a lot of albums that I’d read about and that came recommended. Obviously, that’s an album that people tend to put in their top 100 records. I just checked it out. I was already into Prince, and I could tell that Prince had been massively influenced by them. Also, the Beastie Boys’ Paul’s Boutique was an album I liked a lot as a teenager, and some of the samples from that are from There’s A Riot Goin’ On. So when I did buy this album, and got it home to listen to it, it was familiar to me somehow because I’d recognise drum breaks from the Beastie Boys or clavinet parts from their records that are sampled, but I could also recognise Prince in the singing style. It’s just the grooves on that record, really. There’s a very lazy feel to it; there’s a combination of drums with a drum machine. It was a very early record to do that. That’s something I try and do a lot in my own music, and in Hot Chip.
