Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson had a tall order to one-up himself after he and producer Joseph Patel won the Best Documentary Feature Oscar in 2022 for “Summer of Soul.” But he found it with “Sly Lives!,” the story of Sly Stone and his revolutionary music with Sly & the Family Stone. Beyond just a biographical account, the documentary, subtitled “(aka The Burden of Black Genius),” examined something bigger: The extraordinary representational burden Black artists carry.
Asking the 20 or so artists who appear in “Sly Lives!” about that — from Jimmy Jam to D’Angelo to André 3000 — Questlove had a realization: It’s “probably the most frightening question they’ve ever been asked,” he said at a Q&A for the film, which occurred at IndieWire’s Pass the Remote event, presented by Disney and Hulu. The screening and Q&A at Vidiots Foundation in Los Angeles on May 3 drew a packed house, and Questlove and Patel both mingled with attendees afterward at the beer and wine reception in the lobby that followed, much as the interviewees did for our previous Pass the Remote panels in April about casting and TV music. (Watch the full panel above.)
But as celebratory as the event was, it was thoughtful — and thought-provoking — too. Questlove said that asking that question of his interviewees was like “Jedi mind tricking people.” Stone’s life meandered from extraordinary creative highs to long periods of creative inactivity marked by questionable choices, in his career and in his life. “What we’re not trying to do is pile on,” Questlove said. (See photos from all our 2025 Pass the Remote events here.)
“It would’ve been so easy just to tell the worst stories and the worst experiences and take advantage of peoples’ poor choices in life just to benefit our film and tell a more sensational story,” the director continued. “Especially with Black artists, they’re not treated as human beings. Even the Family Stone members [we interviewed] were like, ‘Boy, what is this? Therapy? You trying to make me go to therapy?’ That sort of thing. A lot of them aren’t asked half the time how they feel. I put out feelers to about 19, 20 of my peers. I wish I could probably say this is probably the most frightening question they’ve ever been asked. And a lot of them didn’t want to do it because they couldn’t allow themselves to go there. Some agreed to do it and then day of, hours before were like, ‘Are you showing up?’”
Needless to say there was a lot of anxiety there, because the experience of having to be all things to all people as a Black artist — while putting the best foot forward to represent Black excellence — and continually delivering at the highest level, is pretty universal. With all of that pressure, fissures can reveal themselves. “This is also Lauryn Hill’s story,” Questlove said. “This is also D’Angelo’s story. This is Frank Ocean’s story. This is Kanye’s story right now. You have everything you ever wanted in the world. Why are you purposely trying to mess this up? And it’s so much deeper. From afar, we think we want things. But there’s so much under the surface that we have to explore it. And I think that’s frightening for people sometimes.”
Producer Patel added, “D’Angelo [who’s interviewed in the film] also suffered through some of the same things Sly did when he was successful, he put out one album and everyone called him the next Marvin Gaye. And then he does Voodoo and he releases a single, ‘How Does It Feel?,’ with a video that people can’t stop talking about. Ahmir was witness to D’Angelo struggling to go on stage, every night getting later and later, because he knows he has to be in top physical condition to perform that song with his shirt off to a screaming, sold out room every night. He’s been through that. So everyone in the movie, whether people pick up on it or not, it was really intentional. We spent a lot of time in pre-production figuring out who are the people that could speak to Sly’s story as proxies.”
That’s also because the 82-year-old Stone wasn’t interviewed for the movie. “Sly Lives!” is fundamentally more concerned with his impact and influence on other artists — one sequence narrated by Jimmy Jam showing how “Dance to the Music” influenced “Rhythm Nation” is particularly extraordinary — and what he represents about Black artistry, than it is about parsing his biography.
“When we really actually set out to work on this, I asked Ahmir, ‘What’s the story?’” Patel said. “And he said, ‘It’s about Sly. But also when you trace back all the Black artists who find success,’ including Ahmir, including his peers. He was like, ‘Sly was really the first to go through this thing that we all experience.’ And I think for us and the films that we do together, it’s about one specific thing, but really something that resonates more to a bigger idea. And so he, Ahmir, in the very first conversation was like, ‘It’s about Sly, but it’s really about the burden of Black genius.’”
The film is also about how artists are remembered, and the particular set of circumstances that result in certain artists being particularly celebrated. It makes a convincing case Sly Stone is one of the most influential artists of all time… so why isn’t he revered even more?
“We talked about very, very, very early was telling Sly’s story with empathy,” Patel said. “That’s important. But also the fact that he’s still alive is important. It’s why the film is titled ‘Sly Lives!’ because had he passed away at 27, like a lot of people of his generation, famous and on top, would we revere him more? You know what I mean? And it’s like he… Ahmir also talks about the run of genius. He talks about how most artists have a genius run of max seven years. And then a lot of those artists that he’s referencing died before we could find out. Sly didn’t, and Sly probably had more down years than up years, but does that mean he’s any less of a genius? I think those are the subtext questions of the film.”
Watch the entire panel conversation with Questlove and Joseph Patel above.
