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Smokey Robinson claims in a new court filing that the former housekeepers suing him for rape are trying to slow-walk the lawsuit to gain maximum leverage for an extortionate settlement payout, including by dealing a financial blow to the Motown legend’s ongoing tour.
Lawyers for the 85-year-old singer made this argument in a Thursday (June 12) motion to require the deposition of one of the four anonymous former housekeepers who allege he forced them to have sex at his Los Angeles-area home dozens of times over nearly two decades. Robinson adamantly denies the claims and has countersued the women for extortion, defamation and elder abuse.
Robinson’s attorney, Christopher Frost, says in the new court filing that the housekeepers are refusing to participate in evidence collection. He claims that the women’s lawyer, John Harris, allegedly informed him that he wants to delay all discovery until they’ve litigated a motion to strike Robinson’s counterclaims, a lengthy process that could take months.
Frost claims the housekeepers, who he says demanded $100 million from Robinson and his wife Frances before suing them both in May, are doing so as a tactic to maximize settlement leverage. According to the motion, this strategy is aimed at cutting into profits from Robinson’s ongoing international tour celebrating the 50th anniversary of his album A Quiet Storm.
“Plaintiffs have effectively conceded that their intention was to file a salacious lawsuit, do nothing to prosecute it, neuter the Robinsons’ ability to defend themselves, and let the lawsuit linger publicly while the Robinsons have to live every day under the unfair specter of public opinion and while Mr. Robinson’s tour is negatively affected,” Frost writes.
“This plays into plaintiffs and cross-defendants’ strategy to exact leverage on Mr. and Ms. Robinson,” Frost adds. “The longer Mr. Robinson’s livelihood is harmed, the more pressure there is for the Robinsons to give in to plaintiffs’ and cross-defendants’ extortionate demands.”
Frost is asking for a court order requiring one of the four housekeepers, identified in court filings as “Jane Doe 2,” to sit for a deposition at his Los Angeles law office within two weeks of the motion being heard. Frost says the women should also foot the bill for nearly $5,000 in legal fees the Robinsons have run up bringing this motion.
“If plaintiffs and cross-defendants are not sanctioned for their abusive behavior, they will expect that they can continue this behavior during the pendency of this case, which will only create more delays and more motion practice,” writes Frost. “The utilization of this strategy must be nipped in the bud.”
The housekeepers’ lawyers did not immediately return a request for comment on the motion on Friday (June 13).
In addition to the civil lawsuit, the former Robinson housekeepers have also filed a police report against the singer. The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department is now investigating the women’s sexual assault claims.
R. Kelly’s attorney claims the disgraced R&B star and convicted sex offender has been placed in solitary confinement as retaliation for publicizing bizarre allegations that prison officials tried to solicit a fellow inmate to kill him.
Kelly’s solitary confinement is the subject of a court filing late Thursday (June 12) from lawyer Beau Brindley, who earlier in the week petitioned a federal judge in Chicago to cut short the 30-plus-year prison sentence imposed on the singer (Robert Sylvester Kelly) for two sets of sex crime convictions.
Brindley claimed on Tuesday (June 10) that prison officials at the Federal Correctional Institution in Butner, N.C., are trying to have Kelly killed to keep him from divulging prosecutorial misconduct he’s supposedly uncovered since his trials. Brindley said a member of the Aryan Brotherhood prison gang was tasked with Kelly’s murder.
Now, Brindley says Kelly is facing retaliation for publicizing his strange allegations. The defense lawyer claims Kelly was placed in solitary confinement within hours of filing the motion for release, without access to a phone to call his family or lawyers.
“Mr. Kelly has spiders crawling over him as he tries to sleep,” writes Brindley. “He is alone in the dark in miserable conditions.”
According to Brindley, Kelly has not eaten since being sent to solitary because he’s afraid that prison officials might have his food poisoned. Guards won’t let the singer access the peanut butter and crackers he previously purchased from the jail’s commissary, Brindley says.
Brindley’s filing reiterates his request to have Kelly immediately released on a temporary furlough or transferred to home detention.
Spokespeople for both the Federal Bureau of Prisons and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Chicago declined to comment on Brindley’s allegations on Friday (June 13).
While prosecutors have not yet responded to the substance of Brindley’s murder plot claims, they criticized the defense lawyer earlier this week for naming one of Kelly’s anonymous child victims in the Tuesday motion. The judge in the case made Brindley re-file the motion with proper redactions, and prosecutors are due to file their response on Monday (June 16).
Brindley, meanwhile, has been publicly asking President Donald Trump to pardon Kelly in conjunction with the long-shot allegations about a government conspiracy. In a statement earlier this week, Brindley said, “This is precisely the kind of prosecutorial corruption that President Trump has vowed to eradicate. We believe he is the only one with both the power and the courage to do it.”
Kelly was convicted in 2021 and 2022 at two separate federal trials, one in New York and one in Chicago, on a slew of criminal charges including racketeering, sex trafficking, child pornography and enticing minors for sex.
The former R&B star was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the New York conviction and 20 years in the Chicago case, although the vast majority of the second sentence will overlap with the first. Both convictions have been upheld on appeal.
Rodney Brown, drummer on 1967’s “Funky Broadway,” a Dyke & the Blazers classic and one of the first hit songs to use a variation on the word “funk” in its title, died May 17 of unknown causes in an unknown location. The lifelong Phoenix resident, who’d been the last surviving member of the band’s original lineup, was 78.
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Brown’s distinctive skipped-beat syncopation on “Funky Broadway,” a track covered by many artists, most notably Wilson Pickett with a Billboard Hot 100 No. 8 hit later that year, turned out to be influential. Clyde Stubblefield employed a similar technique on James Brown’s “Funky Drummer,” released in 1970, which became a widely sampled breakbeat on numerous hip-hop classics.
“‘Funky Broadway’ started the funk beat that was heard around the world,” says Lucius Parr, a veteran Phoenix guitarist whose ’70s band, the Soul Keepers, featured Brown on drums. “‘Funky Broadway’ had a break where they gave Rodney this drumbeat solo — ‘wiggle your waist, baby, shake, shake, shake,’ all that stuff. It was just Dyke and the drummer.”
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The original “Funky Broadway” single, split into two pieces, with “Part 1” on the A-side of the single and “Part 2” on the B-side, peaked at No. 65 on the Hot 100 in August 1967, as well as No. 17 on the R&B chart (now the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart). The band’s independent label, Artco, struggled to break the song on the radio because programmers responded, “You can’t say ‘funk’ on the radio,” according to John P. Dixon, an Arizona music historian who helped found the Arizona Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame. DJs at white stations, at the time, associated the word with Black culture and avoided it: “It was just one of those words, they felt, as a rock ‘n’ roll radio station, they would have a hard time,” Dixon says. “People would get turned off by it.”
(Jazz tracks had used the word several times before “Funky Broadway,” including Horace Silver’s “Opus de Funk” in 1953, but these songs were never chart hits. Also, country singer and comedian Ray Stevens, who is white, had a No. 91 Hot 100 hit in 1966 with “Freddie Feelgood (And His Funky Little Five Piece Band).”)
Pickett’s version had the effect of desegregating the word, but tragically, the Blazers were never able to fully capitalize on the song’s success: Frontman Arlester “Dyke” Christian was shot to death in Phoenix in 1971.
Influenced by James Brown and the Temptations, Rodney Brown first picked up drums after he was playing basketball in a park and happened to see a band playing nearby. His mother bought him a drum kit. Dyke & the Blazers’ saxophonist, Bernard Williams, invited him into the band, and his first gig with them was at a local Elks Club. “When we made the record, they gave me a drum solo,” Brown said in a 2004 interview for the Arizona Music and Entertainment Hall of Fame. “I’d only been playing six months when we made ‘Funky Broadway.’”
After performing before large crowds on a 1967 tour — including a run at New York’s Apollo Theatre, where James Brown was in attendance, according to interviews with band members — the original lineup broke up. Christian convened a new version of the Blazers, which at one point included James Gadson, a prolific session drummer who appeared on songs by the Jackson 5, Paul McCartney, Herbie Hancock, Bill Withers and many others.
This Blazers iteration, including musicians who would go on to play with the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band and Earth, Wind & Fire, hit No. 4 on the R&B chart with “Let a Woman Be a Woman – Let a Man Be a Man” and No. 7 with “We Got More Soul,” both in 1969.
Rodney Brown played in bands sporadically after his Dyke & the Blazers experience. At the time of his death, he was working in real estate. “Funk started right here in the desert,” he said in 2004, “and we were part of the group that started it.”
Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor Sly Stone, who died on Monday (June 9) at age 82, by looking at the final of Sly & the Family Stone’s three Hot 100-toppers: the joyous but fractured “Family Affair.”
True to its name, Sly & the Family Stone had been the ultimate musical family affair. Of course, it literally comprised multiple siblings — Sly Stone (originally Sylvester Stewart) was of course the band’s brilliant leader and de facto frontman, while brother Freddie sang and played guitar, sister Rose sang and played keys, and sister Vet even occasionally filled in for Rose on tour. But it was the band’s familial spirit that originally sparked its jump-off-the-stereo brilliance, a palpable sense of shared love, excitement and unity. The on-record and on-stage product reflected the band’s real-life late-’60s closeness, as a Bay Area-based unit that happily did everything together: In 2025’s Questlove-helmed Sly Lives documentary, the group waxes nostalgic about how they’d all ride bikes together, watch movies together, even buy dogs together. “I think we spent more time together than we spent with our family members,” recalled trumpeter and singer Cynthia Robinson.
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By 1971, the band was decidedly no longer doing everything together, and much of what they did was less than happy. As the band became superstars in 1969, and Sly Stone one of the leading voices and faces of popular music, internal pressures and tensions mounted, outside demands intensified both about their recorded output and their political positioning, and Sly began to retreat. He moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles, self-medicated heavily with drugs, came late to gigs or no-showed altogether, and generally began to isolate himself from the rest of the group. The group’s final single of the ’60s, the double-A side “Thank You Falettin Me Be Mice Elf Agin”/”Everybody Is a Star,” had been a 1970 No. 1 hit, but already displayed a growing disillusionment with the skyrocketing success of the band’s Stand! and “Everyday People” days. It would be the previously prolific outfit’s final release for nearly two years.
When Sly & the Family Stone returned in late 1971, it was with “Family Affair,” an R&B gem that was at once of a piece with the celebratory pop-soul anthems the group had made his name with, and sounded like a different outfit altogether. Though the song still felt warm, soothing and hooky as hell, the group’s earlier spirit of triumph, jubilation, defiance, energy and above all, togetherness, had largely disappeared. Even “Thank You,” for all its creeping darkness, still felt like the band was all in the fight together; by “Family Affair,” they barely sounded like a band at all.
In fact, the most bitterly ironic thing about “Family Affair” — which served as the lead single from that November’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On LP — is that Sly is the only member of the Family Stone to actually play on it. (Probably, anyway; the Riot sessions were so messy and hazy that no one seems 100% positive of exactly who did what.) Rose does sing the song’s iconic chorus, but instrumentally, the song is nearly all Sly, with additional electric piano by star keyboardist Billy Preston and some guitar croaks from rising soul hitmaker Bobby Womack. The Family Stone’s leader most likely provided the rest, including all the verse vocals, bass and additional guitar.
The final instrument played by Stone on the track was the newest and perhaps most important to the musical direction of “Affair” and Riot in general: the Maestro Rhythm King MRK–2. Drummer Greg Errico had gotten fed up with the discord within the group and left earlier in ’71 midway through the Riot recording; rather than immediately replace him with a new stickman, Stone decided to fill out the remaining tracks with the rudimentary early drum machine and its genre presets. But he allowed the machine to work for his purposes by essentially slotting its canned bossa nova rhythm askew within the song’s groove — like J Dilla might have done decades later — giving the liquid-funk shuffle of “Family Affair” a little extra slipperiness. Even Errico, with every reason in the word to take offense at essentially being replaced by an underqualified robot, had to give it up to the bandleader for his innovation: “[He] took the rhythm that [the machine] was producing and turned it inside out,” the drummer raved in Sly Lives! “It made it, ‘Oh, that’s interesting now.’ And he actually crated an iconic thing with it. It became a game-changer again.”
Sly & the Family Stone, Forever No. 1: “Everyday People” (1969) / “Thank You Falettin Me Be Mice Elf Agin” (1970)
The song’s untraditional groove was matched by a near-unrecognizable Sly Stone vocal that almost felt like just another instrumental texture. Previous records had featured his clear vocal piercing through his productions with shout-along sentiments, or as one voice among many in delivering strength-in-numbers statements. This was new: a heavily filtered Stone seemingly singing from a remote corner of the studio, feeling more like a disembodied narrator than a leading man. What’s more, his singing register had dropped, as if he’d aged multiple decades (or gone through a second puberty) in between Stand! and Riot, with the result landing Stone somewhere between crooning and sing-speaking.
The vocals were jarring, but so were the lyrics. In 1969, a “Family Affair” would be an occasion for joy and revelry, but by 1971, it was a little more complicated — and the family portrait painted by Stone was of a largely dysfunctional unit, with siblings who head in different directions, newlyweds with maybe-straying eyes, and fraught emotions running high all around. “You can’t leave ’cause your heart is there/ But, sure, you can’t stay ’cause you been somewhere else,” Stone sings of his own conflicted feelings in the song’s most revealing passage. “You can’t cry ’cause you’ll look broke down/ But you’re cryin’ anyway ’cause you’re all broke down.”
But downers don’t usually become No. 1 hits — and indeed, despite the heavy dynamics of this “Family Affair,” the ultimate feeling is still more one of welcoming than of alienation. Partly, that’s because of the gleeful boogie Preston’s plush keys and Sly’s aqueous guitars do around the song’s rain-slicked beat, and largely, that’s because Rose’s “It’s a family affaaiiiiii-iiiiirrrr…” callouts — the first vocals of any kind you hear in the song — are so comforting and inviting that it can’t help but rub off on the rest of the song. But it’s also because, even with Sly’s clearly mixed feelings about his own place within the family, he still feels audibly connected to it; it’s a complex relationship, but still a loving one at heart. “Blood’s thicker than the mud,” he proclaims early in the song, and despite everything, he sounds like he means it.
Unfortunately, the Family Stone had already begun to splinter. Errico was the first out the door, the next year, bassist Larry Graham followed. As the band began to lose its center and as Sly’s productivity and reliability both stalled, so did its commercial success: the long-awaited There’s a Riot Goin’ On topped the Billboard 200 and is hailed today as a classic (despite drawing mixed reviews at the time for its murky production and disjointed jams), but “Family Affair” was its only single to even reach the Hot 100’s top 20. Fresh, released in 1973, saw the band returning to greater accessibility, and kept up its streak of classic lead singles with the slithering “If You Want Me to Stay.” But even that song missed the top 10, and as acolytes like the Ohio Players and Parliament-Funkadelic had replaced the band at funk’s forefront, the Family Stone’s relevance continued to slide until officially splitting in 1975.
Considering Sly Stone was just 32 when the Family Stone dissolved for the first time, it feels both deeply sad and highly improbable that his career never really found a proper second act. But Sly’s subsequent attempts throughout the late ’70s and ’80s to launch a solo career or revive the Family Stone with a new lineup largely fell on deaf ears; even a seemingly world-stopping (or at least potentially career-re-sparking) collaborative endeavor alongside P-Funk leader George Clinton fell into disarray and resulted in an album that was mostly dismissed critically and commercially. Drug abuse continued to take its toll on an increasingly reclusive Sly, and despite sporadic reappearances over the last four decades, a true comeback was never really in the cards for the music legend.
But even if his own presence was minimal over the past half-century, the impact of Sly Stone’s music remained seismic. Outside of setting the early standard for what would become funk’s golden age in the early ’70s, the Family Stone’s catalog remained one of the most well-mined sample sources across the ’80s and ’90s for N.W.A, LL Cool J, the Beastie Boys, Cypress Hill, Beck, Janet Jackson and countless other game-changing acts. And that impact certainly endured into the 21st century: In the first couple years of the ’00s alone, D’Angelo released the massively acclaimed and heavily Riot-inspired Voodoo, while OutKast referenced that album’s bullet-ridden American flag imagery on the cover to their universally beloved Stankonia, and Mary J. Blige had a Hot 100 No. 1 with a “Family Affair” of her own. As messy as things could ever get with Sly Stone or his legacy, the blood would always remain thicker than the mud.
Charlie Wilson teams up with Gracie’s Corner, the popular, animated sing-along series on YouTube, on “Have a Good Time,” a new single released by the family-run channel Friday morning (June 13). The R&B mainstay sings on Gracie’s dance groove and stars in its music video, launching below.
With a little help from Wilson — aka “Uncle Charlie” — Gracie’s latest song inspires young viewers to get up and move along to the music: “Uncle Charlie says clap your hands! Clap, clap! And do your dance! Uncle Charlie says stomp your feet! Stomp, stomp!”
Kids should catch on the Uncle Charlie’s feature fast, as it’s a reference to the classic childhood game Simon Says.
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“Working with Charlie Wilson on ‘Have A Good Time’ has been an absolute dream. His energy and passion for music are contagious, and he brings such a joyful spirit to everything he does. This song is all about celebrating movement, fun, and togetherness — something Uncle Charlie embodies effortlessly. Seeing Gracie and Charlie share the mic is a special moment for families everywhere, and we can’t wait for kids to dance along!” Dr. Javoris Hollingsworth, the real-life Gracie’s dad and co-founder of Gracie’s Corner, tells Billboard Family.
“Have a Good Time” is now available on streaming services including YouTube, Spotify and Apple Music.
Gracie’s Corner is known for positive, fun content like 2024’s viral “Veggie Dance,” the “yum, yum, eat ’em up!” dance number reminding children to eat their asparagus (and broccoli and Brussels sprouts and cauliflower, et al.), and the empowering 2020 breakthrough hit “I Love My Hair.”
The creators behind ‘Gracie’s Corner’: Graceyn “Gracie” Hollingsworth and her parents, Dr. Javoris Hollingsworth and Dr. Arlene Gordon-Hollingsworth.
Cécile Boko
The winner of two NAACP Image Awards — for outstanding children’s program and outstanding animated series — in 2025, the channel starring an animated Graceyn “Gracie” Hollingsworth aims to entertain and uplift with educational, inclusive content that speaks to a diverse audience.
It’s a family pursuit and passion, as it was all started by Gracie and her parents, Dr. Javoris Hollingsworth and Dr. Arlene Gordon-Hollingsworth. At press time, their YouTube account has more than 5.5 million followers, with total views surpassing 4.6 billion since its inception in 2020.
Nelly and Ashanti rekindled their romance in 2023, about 10 years after originally breaking their relationship off. It’s been a busy two years since, with the couple tying the knot and welcoming their son, Kareem “KK” Haynes, in July 2024. The “Body On Me” collaborators are set to pull back the curtain and give fans […]
Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor Sly Stone, who died on Monday (June 9) at age 82, by looking at the second of Sly & the Family Stone’s three Hot 100-toppers: the disillusioned party staple “Thank You Falettin Me Be Mice Elf Agin.”
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It should have been the victory lap. Sly & the Family Stone’s 1969 was one for the absolute ages, kicking off with the band topping the Hot 100 for the first time with “Everyday People” that February, continuing through the release of its commercially successful and highly acclaimed Stand! album that May, hitting a new gear with the standalone single “Hot Fun in the Summertime” in July and perhaps peaking with a legendary set at the iconic Woodstock festival in August. By year’s end, the Family Stone was unquestionably one of the biggest and most important acts in American pop music — and with the December release of the playfully and gratefully titled single “Thank You Falettin Me Be Mice Elf Agin” (as a double A-side alongside the sweeter but less spectacular “Everybody Is a Star”), you’d think the band was simply putting a nice bow on their ’60s run and looking forward to an equally thriving ’70s.
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Well, yes and no, but mostly no. The song had the chorus you might have suspected from such a single — and perhaps more importantly, it had the commercial success — but the tone was very different than Sly & The Family Stone’s prior singalongs. Previous classics like “Dance to the Music,” “Everyday People” and “Sing a Simple Song” — all of which are name-checked, with no shortage of irony, in one of the song’s later verses — communicated a communal spirit above all else, of a band with a mixed-gender and mixed-race lineup and no proper lead singer, because the party was equally welcome to all. But by the time of “Thank You,” the party had gotten a little weird and dark, and throughout the song you can hear most of the band members actively looking for the exit.
As Sly & The Family Stone was racking up the accolades and accomplishments during its career year, the band itself was starting to fall apart. Members were becoming alienated from one another, and bandleader Sly Stone in particular was dealing with all kinds of internal and external pressures, which led to health issues and a retreat from the spotlight, and both exorbitant spending and heavy drug use to cope with all of it. “During that period, [he] had enormous pressures on him to align himself with the voices of despair and nihilism,” former manager David Kapralik said of Sly Stone’s turn-of-the-decade turmoil in Fred Bronson’s The Billboard Book of Number 1 Hits. “The poor kid was torn apart.”
You wouldn’t quite ascribe despair or nihilism to the lyrics to “Thank You” — and certainly not to the groove, elevated by Larry Franklin’s innovative slap-bass hook, which pops like air bubbles rising to the surface. But the rest of the Family Stone does feel somewhat submerged: The horns are tentative and a little slurred, the guitar is jagged and scraping, the drums can’t quite carry the weight. While the opening bounce of “Thank You” is buoyant enough to suggest good times, the panic sets in by the time of the song’s famous post-chorus breakdown section, which sounds like the whole band gasping for air.
And the vocals, once punchy and emphatic in early Family Stone singles, are now clipped and indistinct, multiple band members seemingly shouting over one another, rather than cooperatively taking turns as they once did. What’s more, the mix practically swallows them whole as the song goes on: By the time of the song’s final verse, they’re barely audible, with lyrics you can only discern on an extremely close listen. It’s the sound of a band that feels like it’s not being properly heard anyway — so why even bother making it easy for you?
Forever No. 1: Sly & The Family Stone, “Everyday People”
Sly Stone’s lyrics certainly suggest as much. The first verse features him running from a gun-toting devil, while the second seems to find him at an industry party — and he sounds much more freaked out by the latter, protesting, “Thank you for the party/ But I could never stay/ Many things on my mind/ Words in the way.” The last point about words getting in the way is driven home by the third verse, in which he and the band quote many of the their most famous anthems with dispassionate dismissiveness, only really seeming to mean it on the final one, when their declaration of “Papa’s still singing/ You can make it if you try,” feels like they’re quoting a loved one trying to pull them out of their despondency. And the final verse ends — somewhat inaudibly — with the troubled “where do we go from here?” thought: “Dyin’ young is hard to take/ Sellin’ out is harder.”
So how did this song with the sub-aquatic groove and the claustrophobic lyrics still become a No. 1 hit? Well, of course it helps to be anchored by such a mighty chorus. There’s no murmuring or sonic burying being done once you get to the song’s refrain — just the whole band shouting out the title like they mean it, like they really do still want to take you higher. It’s a strong hook and a powerful sentiment, which understandably had the impact of drowning out most of the subtler, less clearly audible signs throughout the rest of the record that all was not right in Stoneland. (As for the modegreened stylization of the title, Stone wrote in his autobiography — also titled after the song — that “mice elf” was meant to suggest “small humble things that were reminders of how big the rest of the world was. You had to stand up straight to be seen at all… And there were forces working against standing up straight. I tried to get to them in the lyrics.”)
And whether you did get Sly’s intent in the lyrics or just loved belting along to that chorus, you still would have no problem getting down to “Thank You.” As off-kilter and occasionally disconcerting as the song’s groove is, it is never less than 100% funky: arguably even more so than the band’s poppier early hits, which sometimes sanded off the grit that traditionally characterizes the best funk records. In fact, along with other grimier late-’60s hits like the Isley Brothers’ “It’s Your Thing” and Charles Wright and the 103rd Street Rhythm Band’s “Do Your Thing,” “Thank You” pointed the way more to where funk would go in the next decade, with rougher textures, fatter bass lines, and lower-pitched grooves that suggested something at least slightly sinister going on underneath the surface.
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Really, it made perfect sense that despite coming out at the end of the ’60s, “Thank You” ended up being one of the first No. 1 hits of the ’70s. The double-A-side debuted on the first Hot 100 of 1970, dated January 3, and replaced Shocking Blue’s “Venus” atop the listing six weeks later, ruling for both the February 14 and 21 charts. Though the song would ultimately give way to Simon & Garfunkel’s quintessentially soothing “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” the rise of “Thank You” did portend some angrier, darker No. 1s to come; the entirety of Three Dog Night’s “Mama Told Me Not to Come,” which topped the listing five months later, feels like it takes place at the party from the second verse of “Thank You.”
In the decades following “Thank You,” the song has endured as one of Sly & the Family Stone’s most beloved, and has both been inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame and named by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as one of the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock. It has also been covered by everyone from Gladys Knight and the Pips to Van Morrison to Soundgarden, and sampled prominently by dozens of artists — most notably by Janet Jackson, who used the breakdown section as the backbone to her similarly iconic turn-of-a-decade Hot 100 smash, 1989’s No. 2-peaking “Rhythm Nation.”
But the most telling redo of “Thank You” was from Sly & The Family Stone itself, who refashioned the song as “Thank You for Talking to Me Africa,” the closer to its classic 1971 LP There’s a Riot Goin’ On. The new version, which borrowed musical elements from “Africa Talks to You ‘The Asphalt Jungle’” from the album’s A-side, slowed the original song down to a lurch, quieted the chorus to a near-whisper, and even flattened out the bass pops to a repetitive burble. The funk still remained — always would with the Family Stone — but the party was officially over.
Tomorrow, we revisit the final of Sly & the Family Stone’s three Hot 100 No. 1s, the joyous-but-broken-down lead single from There’s a Riot Goin’ On.
In today’s episode of Billboard Unfiltered, Billboard staffers Carl Lamarre, Trevor Anderson, and Kyle Denis give their thoughts on Lil Wayne’s latest drop and debate on if he is on their list of the top 5 rappers all time. Moderated by Billboard’s Delissa Shannon, each hip-hop expert gives their hot take on the album, his legacy and more.
Did you like ‘Tha Carter VI’? Drop your opinion in the chat!
Delisa Shannon:
What is up y’all, this is Billboard Unfiltered where we debate hot button topics, and whoever wins gets to give their unfiltered take. Now I am Delisa Shannon, your host for today, Short Form Content Director here at Billboard. For our panelists, we’ve got Mr. Carl Lamarre, Senior Director of R&B and Hip-Hop here at Billboard. We’ve got the Trevor Anderson, Senior Charts and Data Analyst for R&B and Hip-Hop, and the goat Kyle Denis, staff writer. All right, y’all, what’s-
Trevor Anderson:
What is this? Like, this initial bias?
Delisa Shannon:
No, I just- I mean,
Kyle Denis:
The intro was crazy
Delisa Shannon:
I mean I can’t even give my dude like props.
Carl Lamarre:
The Trevor, goat Kyle.
Delisa Shannon:
I said Mr. Carl Lamarre.
Kyle Denis:
You got an actual title.
Delisa Shannon:
This is no preferential treatment, don’t let it get it to your ears. I treat all my boys the same. Okay, I don’t discriminate. All right. Are we good to get into the topic of today?
Trevor Anderson:
We’re really not good, but I’ll let it slide.
Carl Lamarre:
I was about to hit my buzzer.
Kyle Denis:
Haters.
Delisa Shannon:
Listen, Kyle, don’t let them knock you off.
Kyle Denis:
They could never knock me.
Delisa Shannon:
Don’t let it. Don’t even start. So let’s get into the topic. So today we’re going to discuss Lil Wayne’s new album, ‘The Carter VI’. The album has received mixed reviews. I want to know, what are your thoughts? Do we think Lil Wayne is still on the list of the top five best rappers of all time? Carl, we’re going to start with your opening statement, 90 seconds, and you start now.
Keep watching for more!
We caught up with Snoop Dogg, Ciara, Keke Palmer, Jermaine Dupri, and more on the red carpet of the 2025 BET Awards and found out their all-time favorite Mariah Carey song.
What’s your favorite Mariah Carey song? Let us know in the comments!
Keke Palmer: You’ll always see my baby
Snoop Dogg: I would be like “Mariah. You know, when I was in jail, ‘Vision of Love,’ we used to sit around waiting for that video to come on. I can’t believe I did a song with you.”
Ciara: Oh my gosh, there’s so many hits.
Lauren-Ashley Beck: Mariah Carey is being nominated for an icon award this evening, what is your favorite Mariah Carey song?
Amerie: My favorite? “We Belong Together.”
Lucky Daye: I like the one she did with. Uh, is it Ol’ Dirty Bastard.
Oh yes, I can see the music video.
Ciara: That right there, by far, is one of the most timeless records that is special.
Jermaine Dupri: “My All.” I know y’all thought I was gonna say one of my songs.
We did.
Jermaine Dupri: She knows that’s my song. Yeah, I love that song. I wish I would have made that song,
We gotta get you on the stage. Okay, that was amazing. I have chills, actually.
Amerie: That’s my son’s favorite Christmas song. He actually liked it outside of Christmas, but he just started dancing and running around. Yeah, it’s just great, like she created a new classic.
Forever No. 1 is a Billboard series that pays special tribute to the recently deceased artists who achieved the highest honor our charts have to offer — a Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 single — by taking an extended look back at the chart-topping songs that made them part of this exclusive club. Here, we honor Sly Stone, who died on Monday (June 9) at age 82, by looking at the first of Sly & the Family Stone’s three Hot 100-toppers: the simple, yet profound “Everyday People.”
Sly & the Family Stone, a genre-fluid, interracial, mixed-gender group (at a time when all three things were unique) was formed in San Francisco in 1966. The group was led by Sly Stone, a musical prodigy who was just 23 at the time. His main claim-to-fame at that point is that he had produced a string of hits for the pop/rock group The Beau Brummels, including “Laugh, Laugh” and “Just a Little.”
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Sly & the Family Stone made the top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 in April 1968 with its first chart hit, “Dance to the Music.” That funky celebration of dance music wasn’t topical at all, but after the stunning events of 1968 – a year of assassinations, riots and a war without end in Vietnam – acts almost had to say something, and Sly & the Family Stone did on “Everyday People,” which was released that November.
The song is a plea for understanding and racial unity, which is so understated in its approach that it’s easy to lose sight of just how progressive its sentiments seemed in 1968. The record has a gentle tone and a disarming opening line: “Sometimes I’m right and I can be wrong/ My own beliefs are in my song.” Who ever starts out a conversation by conceding “I can be wrong?”
The sense of urgency and passion picks up on the proclamation “I am everyday people!” which is repeated three times during the song, and then on the call to action “We got to live together,” which is repeated twice.
Stone, who was born Sylvester Stewart, wrote and produced “Everyday People.” His genius move on this song was to simplify the discussion to the level of a childhood playground taunt – “There is a yellow one that won’t accept the Black one/ That won’t accept the red one that won’t accept the white one/ Different strokes for different folks/And so on and so on and scooby-dooby-dooby.” The unspoken, but unmistakable, message: Isn’t all this division really pretty childish?
Sly makes the point even more directly in the second verse: “I am no better and neither are you/ We are the same whatever we do.” The reasonableness of his argument instantly disarms any detractors.
The song’s politics are expressed most directly in the third verse, in the song’s depiction of counter-culture types vs. establishment types; progressives vs. conservatives. “There is a long hair that doesn’t like the short hair/For being such a rich one that will not help the poor one.”
The bridges of the song contain the line “different strokes for different folks,” which was initially popularized by Muhammad Ali. It became a popular catchphrase in 1969 (and inspired the name of a 1978-86 TV sitcom, Diff’rent Strokes).
Sly wisely kept the record short – the childlike sections, which are charming in small doses, would have become grating if the record had overstayed its welcome. The record runs just 2:18, shorter than any other No. 1 hit of 1969.
Three Dog Night took a similar approach on “Black & White,” which was a No. 1 hit in September 1972 – putting a plea for racial unity and brotherhood in simple, grade-school language. Three Dog’s record isn’t as timeless or memorable as “Everyday People,” but it shows Sly’s influence.
“Everyday People” entered the Hot 100 at No. 93 for the week ending Nov. 30, 1968. You might assume that a record this catchy and classic shot to the top quickly, but it took a while. In the week ending Jan. 11, 1969, it inched up from No. 27 to No. 26, looking like it might not even match “Dance to the Music”’s top 10 ranking. But then it caught fire. The following week, it leapt to No. 15, then No. 5, then No. 2 for a couple of weeks behind Tommy James & the Shondells’ “Crimson and Clover,” before finally reaching the top spot in the week ending Feb. 15.
It stayed on top for four consecutive weeks, the longest stay of Sly’s career. The song was of a piece with such other socially-aware No. 1 hits as Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” (1967) and The Rascals’ “People Got to Be Free” (1968).
“Everyday People” remained on the Hot 100 for 19 weeks, a personal best for Sly, and wound up as the No. 5 song of 1969 on Billboard’s year-end chart recap. The song was included on the group’s fourth studio album, Stand!, which was released in May 1969. The album reached No. 13 on the Billboard 200 and remained on the chart for 102 weeks – also a personal best for the group. The album, which also featured “Sing a Simple Song,” “Stand!” and “I Want to Take You Higher,” was inducted into the National Recording Registry in 2014 and the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2015.
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The band included “Everyday People” in their set at Woodstock on Aug. 17, 1969. Fun Fact: It was the only No. 1 Hot 100 hit performed by the original artist during that landmark three-day festival.
The song is widely acknowledged as a classic. Rolling Stone had it at No. 109 on its 2024 update of its 500 Greatest Songs of All Time list. Billboard included it on its 2023 list of the 500 Best Pop Songs: Staff List. (We had it way down at No. 293, clearly proving the wisdom of Sly’s opening line, “Sometimes I’m right and I can be wrong.”)
While Sly was bedeviled by personal demons that shortened his run at the top, he lived to get his flowers. The band was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1993 (in its first year of eligibility). On his own, Sly received a lifetime achievement award from the Recording Academy in 2017.
Numerous artists covered “Everyday People” in the wake of Sly’s recording. Between 1969 and 1972, the song was featured on Billboard 200 albums by The Supremes, Ike & Tina Turner, The Winstons, Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band, Supremes & Four Tops, Billy Paul and Dionne Warwick.
Spend any time on YouTube and you can also find cover versions of “Everyday People” by everyone from Peggy Lee to Pearl Jam (who performed it in concert in 1995). Other artists who took a stab at it: Aretha Franklin, The Staple Singers, William Bell, Belle & Sebastian, Maroon 5 (on a 2005 remix and cover album Different Strokes by Different Folks) and the unlikely team of Cher and Future, who covered it for a 2017 Gap ad that has recently gone viral.
A couple artists even had Hot 100 hits with their new spins on the song. Joan Jett & the Blackhearts covered the song in 1983 and took it to No. 37. Arrested Development drew heavily from the song for their 1993 hit “People Everyday,” which reached No. 8. (The song used the chorus and basic structure of the original, with new verses written by lead singer Speech.)
Sly & the Family Stone nearly landed a second No. 1 hit in 1969, but “Hot Fun in the Summertime” stalled at No. 2 for two weeks in October behind The Temptations’ “I Can’t Get Next to You.” “Hot Fun” wound up at No. 7 on the aforementioned year-end Hot 100 recap, making Sly the only act with two songs in the year-end top 10.
Questlove, who directed the 2025 documentary Sly Lives (aka The Burden of Black Genius), shared a touching tribute to the icon on Instagram on Monday. “Sly Stone, born Sylvester Stewart, left this earth today, but the changes he sparked while here will echo forever … He dared to be simple in the most complex ways — using childlike joy, wordless cries, and nursery rhyme cadences to express adult truths.”
That last part was a clear reference to “Everyday People.” Questlove also recalled what he called that song’s “eternal cry” – “We got to live together!” Said Quest: “Once idealistic, now I hear it as a command. Sly’s music will likely speak to us even more now than it did then. Thank you, Sly. You will forever live.”
Later this week: Two additional Sly & the Family Stone No. 1s take the group into darker and murkier territory, with similarly spellbinding results.
