Thompson Honors Legend Stone in ‘Sly Lives!’

Cinema | June 24th, 2025

By Greg Carlson

The June 9 death of musician Sylvester Stewart, known much better by stage name Sly Stone, saw an outpouring of tributes, memorials and appreciations from some who knew him personally and many who never made his acquaintance. The groundbreaking visionary and multi-instrumentalist launched hit after hit into the cosmos, defining and redefining genre boundaries with a core group of players that included Black and white, male and female, years before Prince would replicate the technique. Ahmir “Questlove” Thompson, who won an Oscar for debut documentary feature “Summer of Soul,” a brilliant reconstruction/excavation of the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival that featured Sly and the Family Stone, proves to be the ideal filmmaker to honor Sly Stone’s legacy.

The stylized onscreen title of Thompson’s film is “Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius),” and in context the strikethrough speaks volumes as the director interviews artists who talk about Stone and the unique pressures and unrealistic expectations faced by Black creators in a racist America. That burden is addressed as part of the movie’s contemplation of Stone’s well-documented descent into addiction and his disappearance from both the public eye and (temporarily) cultural relevance. It’s a terrific artistic choice to reframe the Icarus-like fall of Stone outside the lurid tabloid headlines that preyed on Stone’s reclusiveness and eccentricity and made him the butt of wrongheaded jokes for far too long.

Thompson integrates a mix of archival and new talking head interviews with members of the Family Stone, including Cynthia Robinson, Jerry Martini, Larry Graham, and Greg Errico. Their firsthand accounts and recollections of working with Sly speak to the good, the bad and the ugly in the eye of the hurricane. But it is the presence of Sly admirers and scholars like Vernon Reid, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, Andre 3000, Q-Tip, D’Angelo, Chaka Khan and Mark Anthony Neal that shifts the movie into the kind of high gear that Thompson does best, setting up the ideal circumstances for next-level deconstructions and breakdowns of Sly’s gifts in terms that can be understood by the layperson.

You will marvel, for example, at Jam’s dissection of “Stand!” and Reid’s superb analysis of “Everyday People.” The side-by-side arrangement of Prince’s “1999” and Sly’s “Hot Fun in the Summertime,” highlighting the rotating vocals used to perfection in each song, is another exhilarating example of Thompson’s prowess as a master DJ (I will patiently wait on any kind of Prince documentary Questlove wants to make). The anecdote about the way that “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again)”— heard at the right moment in the right restaurant — almost instantaneously birthed Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” quickens the pulse. Another segment lays out the influence of Sly on hip-hop, checking samples by the Jungle Brothers, Beastie Boys and LL Cool J.

“Sly Lives!” is a marvel of organization, drawing from dazzling archival footage of Sly and the Family Stone at work and play. Sly himself appears in both performance film clips and formal television interviews and talk show guest spots. Thompson uses discretion in the selection of these moments, since some caught our hero when he was as “high as a Georgia pine.” But even under the influence, Sly knew how to avoid being made to look foolish by the likes of Mike Douglas or Dick Cavett. Hopefully, “Sly Lives!” will introduce a new generation of listeners to one of the most vital discographies in American popular music. But Thompson would probably be the first to tell us that will happen no matter what.

RECENTLY IN

Recently in: