SLY LIVES! (AKA THE BURDEN OF BLACK GENIUS) Review: Sly Stone Doc Enlightens, Entertains

Win a well-earned Academy Award on your first try and chances are, you’d be tempted to call it a day and quit while you were ahead.

 

For Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, though, winning a Best Documentary Oscar for Summer of Soul four years ago made a second, feature-length documentary not just possible, but in Questlove’s case, inevitable. That documentary, Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius), a deep-dive exploration of Sly and the Family Stone, their start, their heyday, and their dissolution, might not qualify as revelatory to most (or some). By the end of its two-hour running time, however, it’ll introduce or reintroduce one of the foundational music acts of the 20th century to American audiences.

 

Born Sylvester Stewart in Denton, Texas, to a musically oriented family, Sly Stone (as he was/is best known), moved to San Francisco in the mid-1960s where, like so many others of the era, he threw his creative efforts into the burgeoning musical scene, first as an popular DJ on a Bay Area R&B radio station. KSOL, second as a record producer for a local label, and third (and last), as the singular force behind Sly and the Family Stone, a funk-soul-rock band Stone co-founded with his singer/guitarist brother, Freddie, and his singer/keyboardist sister, Rose.

 

An ultra-talented, genre-hopping/smashing, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural band (one of the first of its kind stateside), Sly and the Family Stone also included Cynthia Robinson on trumpet, Greg Errico on drums, Jerry Martini on saxophone, and Larry Graham on bass. With Sly Stone as creative bandleader, Sly and the Family Stone released one musically refined, commercial hit after another, including, but not limited to “Everyday People,” “Dance to the Music,” “Family Affair,” “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin),” and “Stand!," that remain as listenable now as they did decades ago.

 

Interweaving a familiar mix of archival footage, contemporary interviews with the band sans Sly, musicians influenced by the band, and family members (among others), and a decades-old, long-form interview with Sly Stone himself, Questlove gives viewers new and old a macro-level glimpse of Sly and the Family Stone. It’s perfect for beginners eager to learn more about a foundational band, their genesis, and indisputable influence on American pop music, as well as a refresher for anyone with more than a passing knowledge of Sly and the Family Stone beyond the top-level hits.

 

Like far too many bands before them, the end of Sly and the Family Stone came almost as abruptly as it started, with Sly, the public-facing front man and impresario disappearing into a decades-long haze of substance addiction. Even as band members left, one by one or in pairs, Sly kept up the pretense of the “family” in the band’s name through the mid-80s. Even that, though ended, and Sly retreated to a life of seclusion where at 81, he continues to this day (he’s seen only in family photos).

 

Questlove, however, isn’t content with simply recounting Sly and the Family Stone’s rise and fall. He has something else in mind, a thesis statement declared in the documentary’s subtitle. Through interviews with band members, and contemporary performers like Andre 3000 and D’Angelo, Questlove attempts to answer the question whether Sly’s acknowledged genius as a musician-performer wasn’t at least undermined by personal and public pressures tied to Blackness in a racially divided America.

 

In Questlove’s view, Sly wasn’t just expected to deliver mass-market, commercial hits, but also speak to the then-contemporary social, political, and cultural issues directly affecting Blacks in America. That invisible burden, again in Questlove’s view, all but made it inevitable that Sly Stone, whatever his gifts and talents, wouldn’t be able to overcome those public and personal pressures, hence the decades lost to substance abuse.

 

While more likely true than not given the unique place Black artists play in American culture (loved by many, hated by some, the latter vocally), and America’s failure to grapple with its racist past and present, Black artists do, in fact, have a greater burden placed on their shoulders. Whether that was the case here, however, isn’t fully proven, in large part because of Sly Stone’s unavailability to participate in Questlove’s documentary.

 

Thesis aside, Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) serves as an important reminder of the positively essential, foundation-shifting contributions Sly and the Family Stone made — and continue to make — to American music. 

 

Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It is now streaming on Hulu in the U.S. and Disney Plus in Canada and Australia.