SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)

Questlove's 2025 documentary tells the rise and dissolution of Sly and the Family Stone. With a line-up mixed in race and gender and a sound fusing funk with psychedelic rock, the band changed American music at the end of the 1960s, and then came apart with Sly Stone's addiction and withdrawal. The film's real subject is in its subtitle: the burden a Black artist has to carry on reaching success in America. Questlove does not reduce it to a story of personal collapse; he asks what the responsibility of representation means inside a racist structure. André 3000, George Clinton and D'Angelo describe that burden through their own experience. The documentary's limit is containing no new interview with Sly Stone himself. Who it's for: viewers interested in the history of funk and soul and in race in American popular music. Who it's not for: anyone wanting a straightforward band history, or avoiding content about addiction.