In 1971, Sly and the Family Stone topped the Billboard 200 with There’s a Riot Goin’ On, which originally featured an album cover that replaced the stars of the American flag with nine-point stars emblazoned across a black (not blue) background. That LP’s title was a direct response to the question posed in the title of Marvin Gaye’s What’s Going On, released six months earlier. Altering the classic look of the flag to complement the album’s bleak outlook on the turbulence of the 1960s in the face of a rising Black Power Movement, There’s a Riot Goin’ On is a prime example of Black musicians using the American flag to explore the questions of belonging and ownership in regard to “Americanness.”
—KYLE DENIS for Billboard, “Inside Hip-Hop’s Evergreen Tension With the American Flag”
I wanted the flag to truly represent people of all colors. I wanted the color black because it is the absence of color. I wanted the color white because it is the combination of all colors. And I wanted the color red because it represents the one thing that all people have in common: blood. I wanted suns instead of stars because stars to me imply searching, like you search for your star. And there are already too many stars in this world. But the sun, that’s something that is always there, looking right at you. Betsy Ross did the best she could with what she had. I thought I could do better.
—SLY STONE, in an interview with Jonathan Dakss, via Miles Marshall Lewis’ There’s a Riot Goin’ On
Less than a year before Dipset’s new eagle logo took over their output, OutKast posed in front of a black-and-white American flag for their Stankonia album cover. Now one of the most iconic photos in hip-hop history, that cover’s black-and-white reimagining of the flag immediately situated the duo’s embrace of Americana as an intentional choice of irony and critique. The album’s title – the name of a fantasy place where “you can open yourself up and be free to express anything,” according to André 3000 – works in tandem with the group’s altering of the flag. The “stank” of Black American musical genres like gospel, funk and hip-hop course through the record, providing OutKast with the necessary tools to illustrate a space of true liberation for Black people outside of the gaze of white America.
—KYLE DENIS for Billboard, “Inside Hip-Hop’s Evergreen Tension With the American Flag”
