"Thank You For Talkin' to Me, Africa" (Sly & The Family Stone)

Most people are probably more familiar with the radio-friendly 1969 version of this track that appeared on Sly & The Family Stone's Greatest Hits (1970) album, where it was called "Thank You (Falletinme Be Mice Elf Agin)."  That version itself is a great song.  For one, it is the first real showcase of the incomparable Larry Graham's slap bass technique, which uses the slap of the thumb against the strings to mimic the sound of a kick drum and a finger pop to mimic a snare drum.  It also has some funky syncopated guitar interplay between Freddie and Sly Stone over Greg Errico's airtight drumming.
But nothing quite compares to the 7-minute version sitting sprawling at the end of There's A Riot Goin' On (1971)--an album that signaled the shift of Sly Stone's music away from the 1960s vibe of groovy togetherness to 1970s paranoia and gritty, drug-fueled decay.  There's A Riot Goin' On is essentially the soul/funk companion to The Rolling Stones' Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers for slamming closed the coffin lid on the hippie dream.  It's an album that everyone should have in his/her collection: deeply funky, scary, gloomy, angry, funny, and innovative, all at the same time.  It's as much a tongue-in-cheek reply to Marvin Gaye's album What's Goin' On? as it is one frustrated artist's prophetic reply to Langston Hughes's poem "Harlem (Dream Deferred)."
The version on Riot is titled "Thank You For Talkin' to Me, Africa," and it has a very different groove from the original.  I've heard it described as a dirge--a funeral march, if you will.  But I wouldn't go that far.  I hear a slinky, confident, irreverent strut that thumbs its nose at pop charts, album sales, A&R people, and even Sly's own back catalog.
And it's Errico's in-the-pocket drumming and Graham's bass that anchors the whole thing--especially the bass.  Graham creates this hypnotic bassline with his slapping technique, and then every few bars, he sneaks in these raunchy little slides up and down the neck of his bass.  There is nothing funkier on tape.  Period.  Nothing the JB's, P-Funk, or Ohio Players ever recorded got this damn stanky.  This is/was the back door and the kitchen floor.