Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius) wound up being an apt title for the Questlove-directed documentary on Sly Stone.
Stone, who was not interviewed for the documentary due to declining health, died in June, less than four months after the movie was released. Yet, there’s no arguing that Sly lives on through a legacy that places his band, Sly and the Family Stone, among the greats in American pop music history.
As pop music reaches an age where its legends have grown up as rock stars throughout their entire life, documentaries about musicians reaching immense heights and enduring a great fall have become commonplace. They're frequently formulaic, buoyed by the archival footage of performers at their peak.
Sly Lives! does that, to some degree. But where it rises above the deluge of rockumentaries is encapsulated by the second part of its title, (aka the Burden of Black Genius). Throughout its nearly two-hour runtime, the movie thoughtfully prods at a question Questlove, drummer for The Roots and an Oscar-winning documentarian, poses to D’Angelo just after the title credits roll.
“I have a theory,” Questlove says from behind the camera, “that for Black artists in America, success can be more frightening than failure. The world’s watching you, analyzing you, projecting stuff onto you, and I think that Sly was kind of the first Black artist to go through that so publicly at a level where there was a burden that came with his genius.”
The "theory" simmers in the background — sometimes closer to the foreground, certainly — throughout the story of Stone’s childhood, his innovative and devastatingly funky music, the boldness of leading a mixed-race band in that era, and his music's nearly unparalleled influence.
Later, responding to why he thought Stone had to “two, three, four times as much” as other musicians “just to make a name for himself,” D’Angelo responds in his gruff voice, “It doesn’t matter what you do in music, sports, or anything that you do. We as Black folks, we gotta always be three, four, five steps ahead of everybody else in order just to break even. It’s just always been that way.”
The presence of the question of how his genius was received elevates Sly Lives! from being another rise-and-fall documentary to a multi-layered dive into his genius and his humanity. It's a movie with a point of view that, mercifully, never presumes to have the answers to important questions. In doing so, it offers a poignant reflection on the artist, American culture, and, consequently, a prism through which we can view other artists who have put their work into the cultural spotlight.
Sly Lives! embraces a complicated legacy and doesn't shy away from the fall, from Stone's drug use precipitating strained relationships with friends and collaborators. It doesn't shy away from the racism Stone and his bandmates faced. The approach is sympathetic yet sober, willing to ask hard questions about what it took to achieve what Stone achieved, while never offering excuses for Stone or a culture that could embrace the music while subjecting the musician to discrimination.
In this way, it's a striking and powerful documentary, on par with Questlove's Oscar-winning The Summer of Soul, willing to dive into a complicated life, into a complicated culture, in celebration of the genius.
How does Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius) stand out amongst other music documentaries?
There may not be a more powerful or thorough resource for bringing the work of Sly and the Family Stone to life. It's a bold movie that showcases the work of an artist, but also probes into the complicated legacy of American pop music and the racism that artists have endured. Yes, it's a movie about Sly Stone, but it's also a movie about American culture, racism, and the price Black musicians have paid for showcasing their genius.
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