This Celeb Documentary Poses An Fascinating Query About Black Fame

In the previous couple of moments of “Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius),” director Ahmir Thompson, aka Questlove, exhibits his viewers a montage of nice Black artists who’ve publicly crashed and burned underneath the heavy gaze of Black expectation in a white Hollywood. We see photographs of Prince, Nina Simone, Whitney Houston, Lauryn Hill and Donna Summer time. We see Will Smith accepting his Academy Award in 2022 after slapping Chris Rock earlier within the ceremony.

These pictures comply with a virtually two-hour examination of the life and meteoric rise of Sly Stone (born Sylvester Stewart), entrance man of the groundbreakingly numerous rock and roll band Sly and the Household Stone. All through the documentary, Questlove poses the identical query many times: May Stewart’s substance misuse and troubled later years have been introduced on by exterior pressures he felt to symbolize the Black group in a sure means, and to satisfy a have to be palatable to a white viewers?

From what the director exhibits in “Sly Lives,” which had its world premiere at this 12 months’s Sundance Movie Competition and heads to Hulu on Feb. 13, that’s debatable.

Culling an intensive array of interview footage and stay performances that includes Stewart, Questlove offers the viewers a candid take a look at what the performer considered himself on the peak of his profession — and infrequently is there any proof of self-doubt or frustration. Relatively, we principally see a determine who’s assured, astoundingly gifted and in a position to supply a easy retort to a journalist or anybody else who suggests in any other case.

In his personal phrases in “Sly Lives,” Stewart, now 81, recollects when members of the Black Panthers requested if he could be prepared to assist them and donate to their trigger. “They were trying to make me feel like I needed them to remind me I’m Black,” he says. “And I said, ‘I ain’t got no problem being Black in the first place.’”

You could possibly speculate that this bravado may need been a canopy. Or maybe Questlove wished to have a broader dialog concerning the nuanced results of fame on Black figures, utilizing Stewart’s story as a gateway to speak about it. However that makes Stewart’s elements of the documentary, although informative, much less efficient as a narrative — and the query the movie raises all through it much more attention-grabbing, though it’s a subset of the topic and handled as such.

Nonetheless, the filmmaker deserves props for really trying a celeb documentary that feels extra genuine than the one-dimensional tributes we often see as of late — and these days at the exact same competition.

Questlove grounds “Sly Lives!” with interviews with figures like André 3000, Chaka Khan, D’Angelo and George Clinton, discussing Stewart’s affect in serving to to desegregate and decategorize music and probing how that duty might have taken a toll on him. However their responses really feel extra projective and private than they’re related to Stewart particularly. Whereas the assorted artists assist assemble a humanistic image of the good but tragically flawed musician, in addition they call to mind their very own struggles to suit inside that unimaginable area: entertaining however socially acutely aware, Black however not too Black.

“Some people want to put you on a pedestal like you are the spokesperson for all Black people,” D’Angelo says within the movie. “It’s enough just navigating and coping through the change in your life that happens when you become a celebrity. Just that, in itself, is a huge paradigm shift.”

Khan additionally appeared within the 2022 Epix docuseries “Women Who Rock,” and mentioned how she didn’t take pleasure in being categorised as anybody kind of musician, though she understood that she was Black and was usually categorized as funk or R&B. Celebrating the extensively numerous canon of her favourite artists all through the collection, the singer, generally hailed as “the Queen of Funk,” has additionally been forthright about her personal expertise with substance misuse.

Whether or not that was due partly to any burden Khan may need felt as a Black artist ― notably developing within the ’70s, across the similar period as Sly and the Household Stone and the civil rights motion ― wasn’t all the time clear earlier than her look in “Sly Lives!” However there’s one thing to be mentioned about how the media has scrutinized her at her lowest moments all through the many years.

“When are we ever going to be allowed to be vulnerable, to be human?” Khan asks in “Sly Lives!”

That very same query might actually apply to individuals like Smith. Whereas his picture solely seems for a short occasion in “Sly Lives,” it recollects the awkward discourse within the aftermath of his Oscar win. On one finish, many exalted him for what they noticed as him standing up for spouse Jada Pinkett Smith, who was among the many celebrities on the receiving finish of Rock’s roast that evening. In the meantime, others thought of Smith a violent offender who deserved punishment. Few individuals tried to have interaction with Smith’s personal struggles with psychological well being and exterior pressures he confronted, not solely as a Black man however as a extensively embraced Black entertainer in Hollywood.

However there’s not often a lot room in nationwide discourse for nuance or complexity, and definitely not for Black vulnerability. Seeing Hill’s picture in that montage is one other reminder of that. Nary a 12 months goes by that somebody doesn’t evoke her 2001 “MTV Unplugged” efficiency, the place she broke down in tears. The individuals who deliver this up do it with a sure discomfort, as if to recommend that every one they really need from Hill is one other highly effective, epic album like “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.” And no humanity.

That need from followers is comprehensible. However even Hill has steered prior to now that it may be debilitating for an artist.

That’s very true for Black performers. “Sly Lives!” remembers that when Sly and the Household Stone’s later albums got here out within the ’70s and early ’80s, evaluations have been essential of the group’s songs participating with the actions occurring within the Black group. Nonetheless, whether or not Stewart’s addictions resulted from that kind of reception isn’t solely clear. What the documentary accomplishes is a portrayal of Stewart as an artist who might simply take care of that form of judgment.

However that was a distinct period, when Black vulnerability and Black creative variety have been barely ideas in any respect, a lot much less ones you mentioned out loud. Even immediately, exacerbated by dehumanizing standom, these concepts may very well be met with a sure stage of reluctance or obtuseness. And in “Sly Lives,” that’s what makes individuals’s reflections about their very own experiences much more attention-grabbing than the portrait of Stewart — and makes them match extra squarely into Questlove’s thesis. The individuals interviewed within the movie are grappling with what it means to be free because it appeared like Stewart was, notably as artists who’re additionally Black.

Take André 3000 of Outkast, whose 2023 album “New Blue Sun” ― a Grammy-nominated assortment of instrumental flute compositions ― provoked a bunch of commentary, from the uninformed to the derogatory, as a result of it wasn’t the hip-hop album individuals anticipated of him.

“I laugh at it because my homies in Atlanta, we’ll talk and they’ll be like, man, you know n***** think you crazy to f*** around with this flute,” André instructed NPR.

As a lot as shoppers advocate for psychological well being and discuss Black artwork not being a monolith, there’s usually a wierd response to a Black artist who fails to fulfill the picture we now have of him — and that artist’s potential to self-sabotage.

Watching “Sly Lives,” it’s arduous not to consider D’Angelo’s personal expertise with these realities as he discusses how they could have pertained to Stewart. In 2005, amid D’Angelo’s reputation and mounting heartthrob standing, he was arrested and charged with disturbing the peace, possession of marijuana, carrying a hid weapon, and driving whereas underneath the affect and and not using a license.

Questlove has clearly been excited about his supposition for “Sly Lives!” for some time, as a result of in 2008 he and others within the recreation have been interviewed for a Spin journal article that mirrored on that relationship between Blackness and fame. The headline was “D’Angelo: What the Hell Happened?”

The piece recalled how D’Angelo felt about his music taking a backseat to his bodily attractiveness throughout stay performances. “He’d get angry and start breaking shit,” Questlove instructed Spin. “The audience thinking, ‘Fuck your art, I wanna see your ass!’ made him angry.”

In Questlove’s documentary, D’Angelo, born Michael Archer, is trustworthy about struggling along with his vulnerability as a Black celeb.

“If you don’t know how to handle it, if you don’t have your soul centered and people around you that you really trust and people who really know you and is really down for you,” he says, “it can be unbearable, man. It can turn you into an unwilling participant. And that’s equivalent to hell.”

“Sly Lives! (aka The Burden of Black Genius)” most compellingly posits that Stewart’s downfall was as a result of his substance issues, which led to his alienation from his bandmates and his virtually whole withdrawal from music. However via different artists’ testimonies featured within the documentary, audiences get a richer understanding of the concept of Black genius, which, sure, can include a way of burden that doesn’t all the time really feel wholesome or productive. And it may well hinder, or outright destroy, Black creativity.

“A lot of factors have played into stalling the left-of-center Black movement,” Questlove instructed Spin in 2008.

Seventeen years later, the general public’s relationship with Black celeb and Black artwork hasn’t modified very a lot. However with “Sly Lives,” Questlove is inviting extra individuals to wrestle with its complexities. That’s a begin.