Sly Lives!

Sly Stone aka Sylvester Stewart

Questlove's Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) is a largely successful survey and appreciation of the career and legacy of Sylvester Stewart, best known for fronting Sly and the Family Stone from 1967 to 1975. I'm not sure Questlove really nails the particulars of the burden of black genius, geniuses tend to have a rough time of it no matter what their color, but the film is spot on in exploring how Sly morphed his own blend of pop, R&B, and rock into funk. Questlove, drummer for The Roots and a musical polymath, is uniquely suited to prod fellow musicians into shedding light on Sly's innovations and lasting appeal. Thus, we get insightful sequences like the one in which Jimmy Jam, himself a top notch arranger and producer, breaks down the instrumentation and vocal arrangements of "Dance to the Music", highlighting the ingredients of Sly's polyrhythmic stew.  

Indeed, Questlove integrates his talking heads superbly into the flow of his narrative. Sly Lives! never once feels academic or dry. The film deftly illustrates how, through sampling, Sly's rhythms helped underpin the growth of hip-hop. The sequences in which Jimmy Jam and Q-Tip display how they integrated samples of Sly's music into records by, respectively, Janet Jackson and A Tribe Called Quest are a perfect summation of how his music became a bequest to future generations. No documentary on Sly can avoid the role drugs played in his decline and Sly Lives! maintains a strong notion of the difference between recording his excesses and falling into a tabloid mode. That said, the film skirts some of the the unhealthy internal dynamics that caused the band to break up. Bass player Larry Graham's affairs with keyboardist Rose Stone, Sly's sister, and Sly's sister-in-law go unmentioned though they were a deciding factor in Graham's departure from the band. Some behind the scenes managerial wrangling also goes unreported. Still, I would recommend Sly Lives! to anyone with even the slightest interest in the man and his music. The film is currently streaming on Hulu.