To hear just this first track, “Luv n’ Haight,” off Sly and the Family Stone’s 1971 album There’s a Riot Goin’ On is to remember that funk music is feel-good music. But to recognize such affect is to go against the (white) critical consensus of the album as a tragic masterpiece, both because of the putatively tragic conjuncture of the album’s recording and release and the seemingly miserable circumstances of lead singer and frontman Sly Stone’s life at the time. And yet the eponymous track is an absence: four seconds of silence. (It doesn’t even load on the above YouTube playlist; after a moment the track that plays is “Luv n’ Haight.”) This absence calls into question the definition of a “riot,” to whom the term is ascribed, and the ability of the state to maintain hegemony of both discourses. The album’s title, it would seem, is a feint: it suggests unrest but offers affective resistance.