‘Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)’ Review: A Dime-a-Dozen Music Doc About a Singular Talent
About an hour into Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson’s debut feature “Summer of Soul,” Sylvester Stewart (aka Sly Stone) and his interracial, mixed-gender band takes the stage of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival and proceed to blow the crowd away. Questlove’s Oscar-winning documentary about the festival illustrated how the sonic diversity of the lineup was partly a microcosm for the big-tent nature of late-1960s Black consciousness. Gospel, blues, pop, R&B, and rock ‘n’ roll were all represented at the festival because Black culture was not, and never will be, a monolith. It’s a testament to Sly and the Family Stone’s musical power that they managed to stand out as a highlight from a foster filled with heavy hitters like Nina Simone and a young Stevie Wonder. There’s a reason that the film ends with their stirring performance of “I Want to Take You Higher.”
With his new film “Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)” Questlove expands upon the brief section dedicated to the band from “Summer of Soul” into a full feature. His motives for the project are laid out in the title’s parenthetical. Sly Stone was a musical prodigy and a visionary frontman whose background as a choir boy, conservatory student, and San Francisco DJ made him a unique entity in the cultural landscape. His group’s brand of psychedelic soul, itself a melting pot of different sounds percolating in the culture, generated a unique crossover appeal whose influence can still be felt today. But as the group reached their peak, Sly fell prey to personal hardship: various external pressures and internecine conflicts within the group exacerbated a crippling drug addiction that ensured the band’s slow dissolution.
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But as much as Questlove probes his many interviewees with questions about the expectations and responsibility that comes with “Black genius,” his film doesn’t live up to the ambitious framework he puts forth. “Sly Lives!” sadly resembles any of the dime-a-dozen music documentaries that litter various streaming services, complete with a rapid-fire opening teaser sequence designed to ensure maximum audience retention and repetitive insights pitched to combat flagging attention spans. Compelling subject matter only goes so far when presented in such a bland, familiar manner.
As a primer on the band’s career and aftermath, “Sly Lives!” acquits itself fine. Questlove and editor Joshua L. Pearson visually annotate every major marker of Sly and the Family Stone’s brief, enormous career, which was very well documented. “Sly Lives!” features plenty of archival footage one would expect, including their appearance on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” with Sly dancing down the aisles shocking a sea of older white faces, and their legendary performance at Woodstock. In the film’s second half, which chronicles Sly’s public fall from grace, Questlove gets plenty of mileage out of his various TV appearances, erratic interviews, and his questionable decision to get married in front of a sold-out crowd at Madison Square Garden. Recordings of key interviews and the group diligently laying down tracks in the studio are also peppered throughout the film.
As “Sly Lives!” correctly insists, Sly Stone is a once-in-a-generation talent, and it’s plainly moving to watch him and his band at their peak overwhelm a crowd. At a time when the music industry was even more segregated than it is now, the widespread success of a racially- and gender-integrated band, who played for mixed crowds, alongside all-white bands, and recorded numerous hits, was genuinely unprecedented. Few others had the ability to project such a utopic image while refusing to shy away from the racial unrest rippling through the country. It’s likewise heartbreaking to see Sly gradually crumble in the public eye.
The problem isn’t the quality of footage, but the lack of a strong curatorial hand. The film hews so strongly to a rise-and-fall narrative that it ends up dictating the material’s use from beginning to end. Questlove holds the viewer’s hand so firmly that even those unfamiliar with Sly and the Family Stone or their history can predict when and where events will occur. The talking-head commentary tips the story’s hand so many times through over-narration that the film’s worst moments suggests an expensively produced episode of “Behind the Music.” By design, there are no surprises in “Sly Lives!,” just a film going through the motions.
The powerful, previously-unseen concert footage in “Summer of Soul” was not only its raison d’être but also its structuring force. That film suffered from bouts of over-contextualization, with Questlove frequently interrupting the professionally-shot material with contemporary interviews or news footage to constantly explain the moment. Though the remembrances could be affecting, it was as if Questlove didn’t trust the recording to speak for itself.
But even when “Summer of Soul” leaned too heavily on its social or historical framework, it could always return to the concert as a grounding conceit. With its diffuse focus, “Sly Lives!” doesn’t have that luxury, and instead the direct-address interviews too often needlessly explicate information that’s easy to gleam, or worse, describe what we’re already seeing. They’re most perceptive at their most analytical, like when the film indulges a formal dissection of “Stand!” or when Terry Lewis and Jimmy Jam discuss how they zeroed in on the guitar riff in “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again)” as the key sample for Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation.” But aside from the sporadically interesting anecdote or observation, most of the talking head discussion don’t illuminate what isn’t already plain to see.
Most of the time, the archival material in a contemporary music documentary determines its overall quality, but since Questlove has an exceptional musical mind, the scenes featuring his conversations with artists like Andre 3000, Q-Tip, and D’Angelo bring out “Sly Lives!” at its best. It’s in the scant moments when these artists speak freely and comfortably when one can see a version of the film that lives up to the promise of its parenthetical. (D’Angelo casually remarking how white artists build generational wealth so they can die in old age like Don Corleone is especially potent.) Questlove opens with asking each interviewee how to define “Black genius,” but the concept takes a secondary position to a basic chronicle of Sly’s textured life. The film doesn’t paint him as a cautionary tale, treat him like a metaphor, or revel in the spectacle of his struggles. Questlove, ever the student of musical history, takes great pains to demonstrate how Sly was as much a victim of a popular culture unforgiving of Black struggle as he was his own demons.
Nevertheless, the film doesn’t examine the burden he clearly shouldered as much as how it brought him to his knees. Sly is undoubtedly a Black genius, one who ensured that his artistic descendants could chart their own path, but “Sly Lives!” never really examines what that means in any meaningful sense. Maybe only the music itself can tell that story.
Grade: C+
“Sly Lives!” premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival. It will be available to stream on Hulu in February.
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