Essential Political Soul Albums

Sly & the Family Stone’s impact often gets taken for granted today. Formed at the height of San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury scene, the band was ahead of the curve, unfurling a volcanic mix of soul, funk, rock, and psychedelic pop alongside their utopian vision of integration and optimism. Their fourth album, 1969’s Stand!, remains as one of the band’s definitive works, underscoring how potent they were in their prime. 

Part of bandleader and multi-instrumentalist Sly Stone’s genius was his ability to merge clever societal critiques with pop sensibilities. He and his crew held a mirror to America, tackling social justice (the title track), race relations (“Don’t Call Me Nigger, Whitey”), pre-Watergate paranoia (“Somebody’s Watching You”), self-awareness (“Everyday People”), and perseverance against societal odds (“You Can Make It If You Try”). This classic would only be rivaled two years later by the band’s other masterpiece, 1971’s There’s a Riot Goin’ On, the bleak yang to Stand!’s hopeful yin.

Predating several seminal political soul releases, such as Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, unsung southern soul legend Syl Johnson turned to the world and dropped his album, Is It Because I’m Black. Written after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination, the bluesy, soul-burning titular track remains a haunting critique of racial politics in the United States, with direct lyrics from the perspective of a Black man on the everyday struggles of living and surviving in America. The rest of this concept album follows right where its centerpiece left off, with a slew of politically charged originals and covers that explore themes of Black identity and social problems. 

 When Marvin Gaye delivered a finished mix of “What’s Going On” to Motown, some executives deemed the single too avant-garde for radio. They were proven wrong when the single received immediate radio impact and sold over 100,000 copies within a week. It also became the springboard for the album itself. 

Inspired by the tortuous experiences of his brother, Frankie, while he served in the Vietnam War — along with a shattered nation after the murders of Civil Rights leaders — 1971’s What’s Going On was the perfect storm for Gaye to communicate the issues that weighed heavy on his mind. In its jazzy atmospheric grooves and grandiose strings, he carved a space where his artistry mirrored his outlook and the times that defined it.

It’s no coincidence that his numb wails of environmental despair in “Mercy Mercy Me (The Ecology)” still resonate with a world grappling with the aftermath of climate change and a life-threatening pandemic. His weary lament on heroin use in “Flying High (In the Friendly Sky)” predates America’s ongoing opioid crisis today. At its most haunting, his indictments on police brutality and racism in “Inner City Blues (Makes Me Wanna Holler)” bridges the fire of the Black Power movement to the global impact of the Black Lives Matter movement. But its sacred, personal edge is equally potent. Honesty peers through this album as if Gaye knows he has something profound to reveal with the world crumbling behind him. 

Picking up where his 1970 solo debut masterpiece Curtis left off, Roots found the Chicago soul legend upping his activist focus and tackling a range of contemporary issues, including anti-war commentary (“We Got to Have Peace”), Black pride and self-empowerment (“Beautiful Brother of Mine” and “Keep On Keeping On”), and ecological concern (“Underground”). Of course, there are divergences from social issues devoted to romance, like the lovelorn “Now You’re Gone” and the tender adornment in “Love to Keep You in My Mind.” 

Mayfield also expanded his production palette, taking cues from the atmospheric, fuzz bass-driven groove of his debut solo single, “(Don’t Worry) If There’s Hell Below, We’re All Going to Go.” There’s a greater emphasis on fiery congas, explosive bass, rousing guitar interjections, and a dreamy harp on several songs, with Mayfield’s smooth tenor threading everything together.

Singer-songwriter Eugene McDaniels’ path was somewhat similar to Marvin Gaye’s. He began as a pop-soul crooner with a few stylish R&B hits. But, as the ’60s came to a close, he penned the incendiary protest song “Compared to What” for Les McCain and Roberta Flack. His second Atlantic Records offering, 1971’s Headless Heroes Of The Apocalypse, is a searing, genre-defying protest album that drew from his growing unease with political affairs.

The vitriolic nature of the album’s lyrics hit a nerve that the album reportedly prompted President Nixon’s right-hand man — former Vice President Spiro Agnew — to pressure Atlantic Records’ boss, Ahmet Ertegun, to withdraw the album from the market. The few who got their hands on a copy were in for a head-turning surprise. Headless Heroes’ sinewy soul-jazz world crackling against McDaniels’ cynical gaze on the nation’s greed and mistreatment of humanity still rings true today.

A Los Angeles-based outfit that fused elements of rock, R&B, funk, African, Latin, jazz, and reggae, War was the closest equivalent to other famous multi-ethnic bands like Sly & the Family Stone, shattering racial, musical, and cultural barriers with their progressive sound and socially conscious messages. 

Their third album as a standalone band, 1972’s The World is a Ghetto, is undoubtedly their masterpiece. From Lee Oskar’s harmonica riffs right into the band’s dense funk rhythms that simmer into spacey jam workouts, the righteousness of the music is undeniable. Listen to the inner city blues meditations in the 10-minute titular track and the equally moving “Four Cornered Room” for proof.

Boscoe was an underground Black avant-garde funk band from Chicago that recorded this album before vanishing soon after. The tight unit comprised members Harold Warner on trumpet, Reg Holden on trombone, Darryl Johnson on saxophone, James Rice on guitar, Ron Harris on bass, and Steve Cobb on drums. Their lone 1973 release is unquestionably one of the heaviest social statements ever made.

Effused with earthy vibes, the politically charged music and lyrics strike a profound chord. With a cover draped in the pan-African colors of Marcus Garvey’s flag, this raw production is a hard-hitting manifesto of Black nationalism and pride, drenched in driving funk with spells of free jazz and proto-rap. This lost political funk brew was rescued from obscurity three decades later in 2007 by Asterisk, an off-shoot of the reissue label Numero Group, becoming rediscovered by rare groove aficionados and funk heads alike.

No ’70s political soul list would be complete without mentioning Stevie Wonder, particularly for his pitch-perfect 1973 masterpiece, Innervisions. Few albums in music history captured the zeitgeist of the early ’70s and remain as relevant today.

 With a range of songs touching myriad topics that connect to the human and social condition in a way that only Stevie can, it stands as a lasting testament to Wonder’s relentless musical prowess, sonic innovations, and sociopolitical poetry. Here, he masterfully covers a gamut of styles — gritty hard funk (“Too High,” “Higher Ground,” “Living for the City”), jazzy soul (“Golden Lady,” “Visions,“ “He Misstra Know-It-All”), gospel (“Jesus Children of America”), and Latin soul (“Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing”). The fact that this is mostly a one-man-band creation with Stevie playing all of the instruments on several songs makes this all the more unique and compelling.

After a respectable career as an arranger for Motown and Stax, Detroit-born Dale Warren linked up with a group of young Cincinnati musicians called the Ditalians. As the story goes, he convinced them to change their group name to 24-Carat Black and cut this concept album about inner city life and poverty on Stax Records subsidiary, Enterprise. Blending orchestral soul, heady funk, and proto-rap, the music here was ahead of its time. Warren and his crew weren’t concerned with playing it simple or straight. They weren’t focused on hit singles for pop appeal either. 

These are extended funk suites, threaded with narrative and musical overtures, stained by tears and pain with socially conscious lyrical content. An obscurity that fell under the radar due to its heavy content and Stax’s financial troubles, Ghetto: Misfortune’s Wealth has endured as one of the most sought-after sampling goldmines in hip-hop history with its thick, menacing grooves lifted by the likes of Digable Planets, Kendrick Lamar, Jill Scott, Eric B., Jay-Z, Nas, Scarface, Ice Cube, and many more.

Philly soul stalwarts Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff instantly knew what bona fides they had in the Ohio-based vocal trio, the O’Jays. Eddie Levert’s husky voice, paired with the silky soul harmonies of co-lead Walter Williams and William Powell was a force. This force drove their third Philadelphia International offering, 1973’s Ship Ahoy.

Proving the masterful mix of Black consciousness and ballads that laced their 1972 breakthrough Back Stabbers wasn’t a fluke, the team went a step further with Ship Ahoy, extending back to the horrors of the trans-Atlantic slave trade (the 9-minute pre-Roots epic, “Ship Ahoy”) and moving to present-day issues on air pollution (“The Air I Breathe”), corruption (“For the Love of Money”), and envious opportunists (“Don’t Call Me Brother”). All this, backed by Philly soul’s greatest band, MFSB, made Ship Ahoy one of the seminal works in a wave of great Black socially conscious albums of the 1970s.

By 1973, the union between the Temptations and producer Norman Whitfield was on the rocks. Ego grandstands, shady deals, and unfulfilling artistic moves began to tear both parties apart. But they churned one final gasp of heady psych-soul brilliance before splintering. The resulting album, 1990, is not one of the group’s best-known works. It didn’t make a huge impression during its initial release in the winter of 1973. Today, it’s grown in stature to something of a classic. 

Unlike much of the earlier Whitfield-produced output, the group conceived 1990 at a critical period in Black music where funk and soul styles became hedged by a nascent underground sound that would soon explode in the mainstream: disco. Whitfield dialed back the pioneering experimentation that defined the Tempts’ psych-soul brand in favor of There’s a Riot Goin’ On-era Sly Stone funk, looking deeper into the despair and ruin rotting away in America. Three stirring pieces of social commentary sound frighteningly timely today as they did in 1973. One in particular, “Ain’t No Justice,” casts a downbeat, mournful light on the injustices and brutality that haunt Black America day in and day out.