Sly and Family Stone’s There’s A Riot Goin’ On is one of the best albums period, from any genre, any era. A seamless flow of barely post-1960s truth-telling, most of it rather grim. Africa Talks To You [the asphalt jungle] is the strange dark heart of it – not a song so much as an excursion, a side trip to a multi-dimensional galaxy that’s equal parts heavier than a planet, lighter than air. And yes, that is a drum machine keeping things in line, a good decade before it was the hip thing to do.