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‘Sly Lives’: Questlove and Producer Joseph Patel Unpack the Documentary, Sly Stone’s History and the ‘Burden of Black Genius’
Questlove unpacks how his Sly Stone documentary 'Sly Lives,' like its predecessor 'Summer of Soul,' is both a history and something more.
The broader theme may not work for every viewer, but in a very meta way, it explores and proposes reasons, via interviews with multiple other artists and creatives, why such a positive, charismatic and multi-cultural-forward musical genius as Sly Stone (who was born Sylvester Stewart in 1943) would fall into drug abuse, financial ruin and prison. [In making this film], I would it be lying if D’Angelo, Lauryn, SZA, Solange weren’t on my mind; if Michael [Jackson], Prince, Whitney Houston, Charlie Parker, Nina Simone, Miles Davis, Marvin [Gaye] — everyone. We chose everyone in the film for specific reason: because Nile Rodgers, Jimmy Jam, Terry Lewis, D’Angelo, George Clinton, Andre 3000, Q-Tip, Vernon Reid — they’ve all lived it and survived it, so that question wasn’t foreign to them.
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