Sly Stone, the driving force behind Sly and the Family Stone, a multiracial American band whose boiling mix of rock, soul and psychedelia embodied 1960s idealism and helped popularize funk music, has died at the age of 82,

Sly Stone, a onetime San Francisco deejay turned pop music innovator and leader of Sly and the Family Stone, has died at 82.

The boundary-breaking, fashion-forward leader of Sly & the Family Stone, who has died at age 82, made an indelible impact on music through his soulful, socially conscious records of the 1960s and ’70s.