Questlove said his upcoming documentary “Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)” serves as an “intervention cry” to the music community and a “letter to all” who are watching, as the documentary pulls back the curtain on Sly and The Family Stone’s rise to fame while spotlighting the singular struggles Black artists have faced through to today.
“Sly was basically the big bang in terms of his positioning as a celebrity, specifically for Black celebrity,” Questlove told TheWrap editor-in-chief and CEO Sharon Waxman while sitting in TheWrap’s Sundance Studio presented by World of Hyatt. “Unlike his forefathers — James Brown, Ray Charles, Chuck Berry, B.B. King, whoever came before him … it’s before the Civil Rights Era, they’re not able to bask in full celebrity freedom. Chuck Barry would have to sleep in the car sometimes, not allowed in a hotel.”
Questlove, who directs the film, won an Oscar for his 2021 documentary “Summer of Soul (…Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised).” “Sly Lives!” is his latest deep-dive into music history and the Black artists who shaped the industry as we know it.
“Sly Stone’s the first carte blanche Black celebrity, and he’ll also be the first domino in many that have fallen by the waysides, because no one prepares you for the tidal wave or the tsunami that is Black celebrity, in particular,” he added.
“Sly Lives!” examines the life and legacy of iconic and legendary funk band Sly and the Family Stone, whose reign helped shape forthcoming artists and music genres. Through Stone’s story, the documentary points out the dark realities of substance abuse among artists in the music industry, as well as specific roadblocks Black artists face.
Substance use and abuse is at an estimated rate of 11–12% in the music industry, per 2024 stats from the American Addiction Centers, which also released a list of 30 famous musicians who battled alcohol and/or drug addictions in partnership with its sister site drugabuse.com.
“You have to shine for the world, but two — you’re expected to shine for your family, your community. And oftentimes, the pressure to take everything with you, take people with [you] is sort of embedded in us,” Questlove explained. “Sly’s navigating of that, I feel, has led to what happened to him in the mid ’70s. And personally, I just wanted to kind of question the notion of when we just dismiss, ‘Oh, that’s just a drug addict. He just chose cocaine.’”
“This is my intervention cry,” Questlove comtinued. “All the information in this film is necessary adhesive … It’s a letter for all of us.”
Like Stone, Questlove said he knows and relates to the pressures that come with being a successful and famous Black artist in the U.S.
“The irony of this project meeting me at this very particular kind of paradigm-shifting tipping point time in my life, I will freely share that, yes, there were a lot of parallels in this film that I’ve experienced maybe in the last two and a half years,” he said.
“It’s not anything specific; the feeling is if you ever had the privilege of riding in the autobahn in Germany, and legally do 180 miles an hour, it’s that level of … there’s just an anxiety feeling that happens, because also the main pressure is that you have to live with yourself, but also with your family members and your friends and sort of please them that, ‘I’ll not leave you,’ the obligatory thing. And also, you have to represent the world.
“Everything you do is under a microscope. That’s a hard demon to get rid of. I’ve taken therapy just to learn to say the word ‘no,’ which, people-pleasing is my jam, ’cause the thing is, if you don’t deal with it, like Sly, you’re going to self-soothe, self-medicate, all those things.”
Watch Questlove’s full interview with TheWrap in the video above.
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