The sound of collective ascent
Sly Stone lived in that groove, that beat that transcends the years, that groove that never fades. With his death on June 9, 2025, music lost one of its most visionary architects—not merely a funk innovator but also a force who fundamentally changed the notion of what a band, a song, and a message could be. I would like to take you. Higher still seems the most genuine representation of his spirit, more so than any other song in his repertory. Joyful, quick, living.
Launched in 1969 on the album Stand!, the song went from B-side to cultural landmark swiftly driven by a simple phrase that grows stronger with each repeat. Sly shouts, “Boom shaka-laka-laka,” and the world shifts ever so slightly. Racially mixed, gender inclusive, and dramatically tight, The Family Stone evokes the sort of anarchy only masters can control. Larry Graham’s bass hovers rather than walks. Cynthia Robinson’s trumpet shouts to the soul like a fire alarm. Seven bodies share one heartbeat, therefore the whole band feels like one.
Sly Stone never needed slogans. His music was the movement. Rather than presenting a manifesto, I want to take you higher radiates something wilder and more community-based. Ecstasy more as revelation than as escape. Together a rhythm to climb into. The rain came down, the audience grew, and this song turned into a ritual during their famous Woodstock performance. Everybody was raising; no one was leading. The tune was not performed. It burst.
We would like to do a singalong together. And see what happens is you got a lot of people that sing and for some reasons that are not unknown anymore, they won’t do it. Most of us need to get approval from our neighbors before we can let it hang down, but what is here is we’re going to do a singalong. Now a lot of people don’t like to do it. They feel that it might be old-fashioned. But you must dig it, because it is a fashion in the first place. It is a feeling. It was in then, it is still good
(Sly Stone, Woodstock, 1969)
Over decades, this song had an impact. Prince bore its torch; Lenny Kravitz, D’Angelo, Erykah Badu did too. You may hear it in Kendrick Lamar’s backbeat, in Anderson .Paak’s harmonies, in any artist bold enough to combine sensuality with truth. Sly created plans rather than just tunes. Among them, Higher stands out as a spiritual edifice resisting fracture.
The song strikes differently now that Sly is no longer present. The message left playing on the turntable after the party ends still reverberates off the walls. A hymn for bodies that danced and a mind always striving. I Would Like You to Take Me Higher was not just a promise. That was a task. Today it’s also a glittering, sweat-soaked homage to the man who made pleasure political and the forever groove.
