Lost in the commotion of Will Smith's slapping of Chris Rock at the 2022 Academy Awards ceremony was that Rock was presenting the Best Documentary Feature Oscar which was won by Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson (producer & drummer for The Roots, which is The Tonight Show's house band) for Summer of Soul (which I haven't seen yet). Now Questlove is back with Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius about the rise, fall and legacy of Sylvester Stewart, bka Sly Stone of Sly and the Family Stone who played Woodstock and influenced legions of other artists with his blending of rock, funk, soul, and pop flavors.
Tracing his early career as a San Francisco radio DJ and record producer in the mid-Sixties (he produced the original version of "Someone To Love" for Grace Slick's pre-Jefferson Airplane band, The Great Society?!) to the formation of the band, SatFS were a unique mix of male, female, black, and white members - including his brother on guitar and sister on keys and vocals - and their sound straddled genres with Top 10 hits like such as "Dance to the Music", "Everyday People", and "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)." (The last of which served up the riff that drive Janet Jackson's "Rhythm Nation.")
But over time Sly fell prey to drugs and poor peer groups and began to show up late for shows when he bothered to show up at all. By the early-Seventies, the group's popularity plummeted as those inspired by them became competition and members began leaving because he was such a mess and he was recording the music himself.
With interviews with musicians like Andre 3000 (Outkast), D'Angelo, Chaka Khan, Q-Tip (A Tribe Called Quest), Vernon Reid (Living Colour), Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis (The Time and Janet Jackson's producers), George Clinton (Parliament/Funkadelic), as well as biographers and others, Questlove weaves a fast-moving and impressive recapitulation of Sly's career and legacy for the first half, but loses some speed when it shifts to Sly's self-destruction because how do you make a guy's life after he'd chosen to be a crackhead with Clinton and was almost a no-show to the group's Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction interesting?
While the title hints at some woke posturing, it's interesting that many of the interviewees shy away from the "black genius" tag. One makes a valid point that there was no prior black Elvis or black Beatles for him to ask how to navigate such fame and the pressures he got from all sides, especially militants like the Black Panthers who wanted him to lean harder into racial division. While the 1971 album There's A Riot Going On (meant as a reply to Marvin Gaye's earlier-that-year title What's Going On?) was more political, he was still trying to stay above the divide.
Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius ends with Sly's rediscovery by hip-hop with samples powering songs like the aforementioned "Rhythm Nation" as well as LL Cool J's "Mama's Said Knock You Out" and Beastie Boys "Shadrach" and the revelation of his three children and their comments about their famous, mostly absent father. He's still alive at age 82, but didn't participate in this film.
I found Sly Lives! to be a solid and informative documentary with some surprising information for me, a musician who never really gave him and the band their due. Now I'll definitely get to watching Summer of Soul as well.
Score: 8/10. Catch it on Hulu.
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