‘Sly Lives’: Questlove and Producer Joseph Patel Unpack the Documentary, Sly Stone’s History and the ‘Burden of Black Genius’

variety.com:

Jem Aswad Executive Editor, Music The new documentary “Sly Lives, aka the Burden of Black Genius,” which focuses on the life and career of the brilliant but troubled musician Sly Stone and his group Sly and the Family Stone, is both a conventional documentary and an extremely unconventional one.

Like its predecessor, the Oscar and Grammy-winning “Summer of Soul” — which was also directed by the Roots’ Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson and produced by Joseph Patel — “Sly Lives” works to incorporate the main story with a larger theme, in this case, as the subtitle indicates, the pressures that come with being both Black and a genius — pressures that have brought down more than one such genius and have led many of them toward self-destruction.

That subtitle isn’t saying that geniuses aren’t created equally — but what happens after that genius manifests itself can be very different for minorities, particularly Black people.

Even with that weighty theme, “Sly Lives” is one of the most engaging and far-reaching music documentaries this writer has seen, and taken as a whole, it may be the best (and I’ve seen a lot of them).