'Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)': How Sly Stone impacted artists Questlove, D'Angelo, Chaka Khan
"We're of similar age, we have very different backgrounds in terms of our upbringing, but we are hip-hop kids who knelt down on the dirty floor of a dusty record shop looking for records," Patel told Yahoo Canada about what makes his collaboration with Questlove so effective. "And in a lot of ways, I think this kind of filmmaking is similar to that. It's the same mentality."
Patel added that what's also appealing about Questlove's approach to filmmaking is that, even with all his success, "he is still a music fan."
"I met him in 1996 writing my first cover story for Rap Pages magazine on The Roots. ... I flew out to Philadelphia to interview him, ... and I had never met anyone like him," Patel shared. "He was Questlove of The Roots, but also, he was a music fan, and he nerded out over record reviews and magazines the same way me and my friends did."
"He's not a gatekeeper, when he learns something he wants to share that story with people. And I think that part of him has always been there, and I think it's the thing that really bonds us together."
Everyday People, Family Affair...you know the music, it's time to meet the man. Directed by #QuestLove, SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) comes to #DisneyPlusCA February 13. pic.twitter.com/7AggVZ0YuW
— Disney+ Canada 🇨🇦 (@DisneyPlusCA) February 13, 2025
As Patel's fellow producer, Derik Murray, highlighted, the impact of having Questlove, a music icon in his own right, lead the stars through the interviews for this film created a place of trust for them to not just open up about Stone, but their own lives.
"He brought comfort and trust," Murray told Yahoo Canada. "When he sat down with these folks, he wasn't stepping into that world a stranger, and ... he's being very honest about his own trials and tribulations with fame and success, and he is ... a genius in his own right."
"We spent a lot of time trying to figure out who to talk to, but we wanted them to be proxies for Sly," Patel said in a separate interview. "D'Angelo was hard. Even though him and Amir are really tight and have a lot of history, it took a year to get D'Angelo to sit on camera for us."
"We started talking about Sly, but he's really talking about himself, and those are, to me, my favourite parts of the movie. Those are the ones where you see the connection between Sly and these artists that he's ... influenced, but also who have sort of taken on the contours of his own experiences."
Sly Lives! begins with one impactful question, "What is Black genius?" Stated very clearly and directly, it's the question that we go on the journey of answering throughout the film.
"The movie opens with this montage of people contemplating the question, 'What is Black genius?' And the editing sleight of hand is that they're really struggling with the question, and ostensibly, the story of Sly is the answer to that question," Patel explained. "Here's an example of Black genius."
"But really they all answered that question, to some degree. It was not an unfamiliar question for them. ... I think Questlove asking that question would have solicited a different response."
But with any documentary, there's an element of wanting to serve the people who may know nothing about its subject, and those who are particularly informed.
"I want to find the sweet spot right between people who know a lot and people who are coming to it fresh, and you want to draw them in," Patel said. "I think one of the things we learned in making Summer of Soul is that sometimes you have to kill your darlings in service of the bigger idea, and we approached Sly very similarly."
"Even for those obsessives, there's stuff in this film that they have never seen or heard before. Sony gave us access to the vaults where we got to hear "Stan" take one. And "Everyday People" take one. ... But for everybody else, we wanted to give them the story, 'Oh you recognize these hits, here's the story of the ... person behind those hits.'"
As time progresses in the documentary, we get to understand the pressures Sly Stone as a pioneering successful Civil Rights Era Black artist, tasked with navigating the anxieties of his career.
In an interesting portion of the film, we get to the superstar's drug use and eventual time in rehab, but as we see the archival footage of Stone talking about his drug addiction and going to rehab, he doesn't have the vocabulary to talk about his trauma, or the understanding of generational trauma.
"We wanted to show how he was struggling to describe, really, what therapy was," Patel said. "He's facing the sort of the double whammy of being part of the late '60s hippie generation, but also being Black. And so in the conservative Reagan '80s, he's a prime target for for people to take joy in his downfall."
"And we were very careful, we didn't want to rob Sly of his agency. He made these choices. The last bite of the film, ... this interview he does with Maria Shriver that we use as a through line through the movie, he says, 'We get everything we deserve'. ... So he understands that he made these choices. ... We didn't want to get lost in the drug stories. We wanted to really spend time in the context around those stories and really how they were portrayed."
"He's a trailblazer, there's no road map for him to follow," Murray added in a separate interview. "I think from that standpoint, I think he felt trapped within his role as this Black artist, as this superstar."
"That's the beautiful part about the archive in this film, is we really get to hear from Sly firsthand, this journey that he was on, and I think that's what allows us to really start to feel like we're understanding what the stresses are, what the complications are, and we're seeing this incredible, epic success complicated by the factor that he's such a change-maker. ... In many ways, I think he was a target for many in the universe that were, quite frankly, racially motivated not to support an artist that had that vision."
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
7 hours ago
- Yahoo
Gabby Windey to Host Alex Cooper's ‘Love Overboard' Reality Dating Series
Gabby Windey, the former Bachelorette co-lead who won season three of The Traitors, has been tapped to host Hulu's Love Overboard reality dating series from Alex Cooper's Unwell Productions and Jeff Jenkins Productions. Windey, herself a podcast host and content creator, is best known for appearances on ABC's The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. She was one of two co-leads for season 19. She also appeared on Dancing With the Stars. More from The Hollywood Reporter ABC News to Launch Exclusive Daily Show on Disney+ 'Love Island' Trio Leah, Serena and JaNa Are About to Get Vulnerable on 'Beyond the Villa' Spinoff Kenny and Kaylor Hope 'Love Island USA' Fans "Can Relate to Us More" in 'Beyond the Villa' Love Overboard, to debut in 2026 on Hulu in the U.S. and Disney+ internationally, will see singles chase a possible love partner while sailing aboard a luxury yacht. The show's synopsis reads: 'As the journey unfolds, romance ignites; alliances form; and hearts are shattered. In the end, only one couple will reign supreme. Who will rise to the top, and who will be left stranded?' In 2024, Windey launched the podcast Long Winded With Gabby Windey. The first series for Hulu for Cooper also has a new title after earlier having the working title Overboard for Love. Cooper will executive produce the series along with her husband, Matt Kaplan, as well as Mina Lefevre, Jeff Jenkins, Russell Jay-Staglik, Jason Ehrlich, Ross Weintraub and Reinout Oerlemans. Cooper launched the Unwell Network in August 2023. In a Hollywood Reporter cover story, Cooper said her goals for Unwell were 'to build this company … It is crazy how much we've done in just a year from a tour that sold out seven cities to doing micro events that have brought thousands of women together and creating Unwell as a brand where we can throw a party and I don't even have to go. I want to be the biggest content creator in the world.' This continues Cooper being in business with Hulu, following her documentary, Call Her Alex, that released in June. Best of The Hollywood Reporter 'The Studio': 30 Famous Faces Who Play (a Version of) Themselves in the Hollywood-Based Series 22 of the Most Shocking Character Deaths in Television History A 'Star Wars' Timeline: All the Movies and TV Shows in the Franchise Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
What's on TV this week—Chief Of War and Eyes Of Wakanda
Welcome to What's On, our weekly roundup of notable shows. Here is what's happening on TV from Sunday, July 27 to Saturday, August 2. All times are Eastern. The biggies (Apple TV+, Friday, 12:01 a.m.) A series 10 years in the making for co-creator, -writer, and lead Jason Momoa, this series follows a Polynesian warrior at the turn of the 19th century. After traveling the world, he returns home to battle against Western colonization on the Hawaiian islands. The A.V. Club's review publishes Thursday. (Disney+, Friday, 3:01 a.m.) The four episodes of this animated Black Panther spin-off tell the tale of Wakandan soldiers who jump across timelines and historical events to retrieve vibranium artifacts. Eyes Of Wakanda centers on a Dora Milaje fighter (voiced by Winnie Harlow) who sets out to capture a man known as the Lion (Cress Williams). Look out for The A.V. Club's review this week. Also airing (Netflix, Tuesday, 3:01 a.m.) Netflix's partnership with WWE presses on with Unreal, which offers a behind-the-scenes look at modern pro wrestling. Paul Michael Levesque, better known as Triple H, hosts this five-episode reality series. (Netflix, Thursday, 3:01 a.m.) Chuck Lorre's latest sitcom stars comedian Leanne Morgan, who plays a woman whose husband of 33 years leaves her. In the wake of her divorce, Leanne leans on her family and members of her church to move on. Kristen Johnson, Celia Weston, Tim Daly, and Jayma Mays co-star. (HBO, Friday, 8 p.m.) Marc Maron returns to HBO after 2023's From Bleak To Dark with a new special, in which he talks about politics, the L.A. fires, and the purpose of entertainment, among other topics. Can't miss recaps Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (Paramount+, Thursday, 3 a.m) (HBO Max, Thursday, 9 p.m) Arriving now (Netflix, Thursday, 3:01 a.m., special bonus episode) (Peacock, Thursday, 3:01 a.m., season two premiere) Ending soon (Adult Swim, Sunday, 11 p.m., season eight finale) (AMC+/Shudder, Tuesday, 3:01 a.m., season one finale) (Paramount+, Friday, 3:01 a.m., season seven finale) More from A.V. Club The biggest news (so far) from San Diego Comic-Con 2025 What's on TV this week—Chief Of War and Eyes Of Wakanda R.I.P. Tom Lehrer, mathematician and musical satirist
Yahoo
8 hours ago
- Yahoo
Spinal Tap has a lot of famous friends, slightly fewer jokes in sequel trailer
We get a little nervous, honestly, when the trailer for a new sequel/revival/general nostalgia-based film or television project features a lot of material from the old works it's building off of—something in ready abundance in the first trailer, released today, for Spinal Tap II: The End Continues. Yes, trailer, we do in fact remember the bit from 1984's This Is Spinal Tap where the dials go to 11; what have you got for us today? A whole lot of famous friends, is the immediate answer, as Spinal Tap II's trailer rolls out Paul McCartney, Elton John, and Questlove to remind us that musicians like This Is Spinal Tap, too. (McCartney gets to play the 'pretending to think Tap are geniuses' game, talking to Rob Reiner's Marty Di Bergi about the poetry of 'Big Bottom,' while Questlove declines the chance to be the drummer for the band's reunion show because 'I don't want to die.') Beyond these eye-catching elements, though, the trailer does give fans some of what will actually determine how well the movie works: Time spent with David St. Hubbins, Nigel Tufnel, and Derek Smalls (or, as we know them in the real world, Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, and Harry Shearer), who do, in fact seem to still have a strong grasp on rock's dumbest semi-success story. Some of the more timely gags in the trailer are hit-or-miss—jokes about crypto and Stormy Daniels are going to age like beef on a sunny day—but the affable dopiness that all three comedy legends bring to their characters is still in ready evidence. (They've also brought in a couple of British comedy ringers to help round out the cast/jokes, including Chris Addison and Kerry Godliman.) (Bosh!) We might feel a little skeptical, but moments like Tufnel rocking out, full electric, with his quiet acoustic pub band, or McKean's blithe idiocy as St. Hubbins, gives us a bit of hope that the film can capture some of the old magic. Spinal Tap II is directed by Reiner, and written by him alongside Guest, McKean, and Shearer. The film hits theaters on September 12. More from A.V. Club The biggest news (so far) from San Diego Comic-Con 2025 What's on TV this week—Chief Of War and Eyes Of Wakanda R.I.P. Tom Lehrer, mathematician and musical satirist Solve the daily Crossword