Questlove On Sly Stone & The Burden Of Black Genius

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Speaker 2 This is Fresh Air. I'm Terry Gross.
Today, Amir Questlove-Thompson is back to talk about the life and legacy of Sly Stone.

Speaker 3 I want to thank you for

Speaker 2 Questlove's new documentary called Sly Lives, aka The Burden of Black Genius, is about the impact of Sly Stone and his band Sly in the Family Stone on music and culture.

Speaker 2 Sly got his start as a DJ and record producer in the early 1960s, formed a multiracial band with his brother, sister, and other musicians, and went on to record hits like Everyday People, Dance to the Music, Family Affair, and Stand.

Speaker 2 Their music influenced Prince, George Clinton, and Funkadelic, the Ohio players, Earth, Wind and Fire, and many hip-hop artists.

Speaker 2 The film also covers the problems that came along with fame and drugs that took Sly down. It premiered at Sundance last month and starts streaming on Hulu Thursday, February 13th.

Speaker 2 Questlove is the co-founder of the hip-hop band The Roots, which is the house band for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon.

Speaker 2 If you feel as if you just heard him on our show, you did when we talked about his other new documentary focused on Saturday Night Live's music guests and music sketches over the past 50 years.

Speaker 2 That one's called Ladies and Gentlemen: 50 Years of SNL Music.

Speaker 2 Questlove's 2021 documentary, Summer of Soul, featuring performances from the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival, won an Oscar for Best Documentary.

Speaker 2 So let's talk about your Sly documentary. I really love this film.

Speaker 2 I want to start with a song, and it's their first big hit. It's Dance to the Music.
It's so catchy, and I'd like you to point out what makes this song special in its moment, which was 1967 or 8.

Speaker 3 This is 1968.

Speaker 2 Okay. So what makes this song so special in its moment?

Speaker 3 Sly will invent the alphabet for which most of pop

Speaker 3 and

Speaker 3 R ⁇ B or black music will write from for, you know, the next 60 years. Like we're still writing from his dictionary to this day.
And so, okay, we have a four-minute song to make.

Speaker 3 How many micro songs can we have in this particular song? In other words, a typical Sly and Family Stone song has a bunch of elements that will grab everybody.

Speaker 3 Like, most songs will just have one specific hook. Like, this is the course, this is my hook.
Okay, here are my lyrics. Instead, Sly will do

Speaker 3 a four-bar part that's like earworm,

Speaker 3 you know, like that'll grab you. And then he'll do another four bars that will grab someone else.
So,

Speaker 3 you know, lyrically and melodic-wise, his formula is also

Speaker 3 the world's funkiest nursery rhyme music.

Speaker 3 Look at Everyday People, his number one hit. Everyone knows Everyday People.
Everyday People is basically the schoolyard version. Like

Speaker 3 the lyrics of that song, the melody of that song is basically schoolyard taunting.

Speaker 3 There is a black one who doesn't like the.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 his whole thing is like, if it can appeal to a kid, to a first grader,

Speaker 3 then melodically you have them. And rhythmically,

Speaker 3 his rhythm section, Greg Rico on drums and Larry Graham on bass, specifically Larry Graham's

Speaker 3 right thumb

Speaker 3 are probably the two most revolutionary

Speaker 3 aspects of Sly's music. And that's because Larry Graham is a bass player who used to play in bands without a drummer.

Speaker 3 So as a result, he would have to hit his bass in a very specific way so that you could feel the rhythm because there's no drummer there. And of course,

Speaker 3 once he's in the sly system,

Speaker 3 he events kind of a thumping-plucking thing,

Speaker 3 which I guess most of your listeners would probably be familiar with the way that the Seinfeld theme sounds,

Speaker 3 or the way that Flea plays in the red-hot chili peppers, like with his thumb.

Speaker 3 Larry Graham from from sly on the family stone uh aka drake's uncle um

Speaker 3 oh really literally yeah larry graham is is well you know drake's name is aubrey graham drake's father is larry graham's brother anytime i show this movie to someone under the age of 30 they're like wait is that drake's father i'm like no that's his uncle um because they look alike But yeah, he revolutionized a way to play bass.

Speaker 3 And so, I mean, pretty much he just invented the idea of like ear candy, like a whole bunch of micro ideas inside of one three-minute song. And that's the genius of Slystone.

Speaker 2 All right. Thank you for that.
Let's hear Dance to the Music.

Speaker 2 Let's do the music,

Speaker 2 let's do the music,

Speaker 2 let's do the music,

Speaker 2 let's do the music.

Speaker 2 All we need is a drama

Speaker 2 for people who only need a beat, yeah.

Speaker 2 I'm gonna add a little good top and make it easier to move your feet.

Speaker 3 I'm gonna add some bottom

Speaker 3 so that the dance of the just won't hide.

Speaker 3 You might like to hear my organ.

Speaker 3 I sit right

Speaker 3 side

Speaker 3 right now.

Speaker 3 Cynthia, yeah.

Speaker 3 If I could have heard the horns roll,

Speaker 3 Cynthia holds the throne.

Speaker 2 So that was Sly and the Family Stones 1968 hit Dance to the Music

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 the drumming is so

Speaker 2 infectious. It's like it's hard not to move

Speaker 2 when you hear that. And it's not fancy.

Speaker 3 So what people don't know is that Sly basically considered Dance to the Music like his sellout song.

Speaker 3 Sly had released this really intelligent debut album called A Whole New Thing, which is probably my favorite album of his entire canon. But it was way too wordy, way too smart, way too nerdy.

Speaker 3 just so ahead of its time that only a certain few latched on to it. And the rejection of that album kind of depressed Sly and his, and his label said, look,

Speaker 3 you know, like you're, you're, you're doing way too much. You know, you're doing way too much.
You got to simplify it. People aren't as smart as you are.

Speaker 3 Like instead of you being the smartest guy in the room, be a relatable guy in the room. Like people just want to dance to the music.
And kind of in a very bitter,

Speaker 3 scoffy way, like he's like, all right, well, people want to dance to the music, fine. And so

Speaker 3 he did a very sarcastic thing. And so he's like, all right, well, people want to dance the music? Fine.
I'm going to make a song and I'm going to teach them how to dance to my music.

Speaker 3 And essentially, dance to music is an instructional introduction on who we are. Hey, I play the bass.

Speaker 3 I play the drums.

Speaker 3 I play the keyboards. And literally, that's the song.

Speaker 3 There's no lyrics to the song. It's just a sing-along.
But what Sly doesn't realize is that in his very sarcastic, bitter, middle-finger type of way, he includes everybody and

Speaker 3 people grasp to it. And so Dance to Music is one of those accidental number one songs that he didn't intend on catching on.

Speaker 3 It was more of like just a bitter, here, you guys want, you know, regular food instead of this, you know, meal I cooked up for you. Fine.
Take your sandwich and get out of here.

Speaker 3 And people gravitated towards it so but there's a lot going on in that song including like the the kind of scatting part yeah so what he includes is you know a very

Speaker 3 you know the drumbeat that is played there is kind of a precursor to what we will call four on the floor And 10 years later, four on the floor will just be, you know, whereas in the 60s, four on the floor means that the snare, the kick, and the hi-hat are all doing,

Speaker 3 that. You know, it's teaching your body how to dance to it.
10 years later, they'll take the snare and the hi-hat away, and it'll just be the kick. Boom, boom, boom, boom.

Speaker 3 And that will be the disco rhythm, you know, or what we call boots and cats. Boots, cats, boots, cats, boots and cats.

Speaker 3 So Sly will basically kind of give you the prototype of what will be the disco pulse in the late 60s. But,

Speaker 3 he's writing the blueprint of what modern dance music will be in 10 years.

Speaker 2 But then he also does a lot of things that become beats for hip-hop artists later.

Speaker 3 Yes. So again,

Speaker 3 Sly believes in micro examples.

Speaker 3 Like, you know,

Speaker 3 another artist will make one hook, one melody. one lyric, you know, like just one thing, whereas Sly will probably try to cram in seven ideas at the same time.

Speaker 3 Like, Sly puts a lot of attention to harmony,

Speaker 3 which is a church thing. So that makes people feel comfortable like, oh, they went to church because they sing harmonious.
But then Sly knows the importance of unison.

Speaker 3 Unison singing is where everyone sings in the same register. So like, you know, think of the idea of like when Billy Joel's piano man comes on.

Speaker 3 You know, that's the type of song that you hear in a bar and, you know, everyone everyone sings together as they hold their mug of beer and, you know, sing along. So

Speaker 3 that's a very inclusive type of thing. So when everyone's singing in the same key without harmony, it's not intimidating.
Like the worst singer and the best singer can unify.

Speaker 3 So he knew the power of unison singing, which is included, and harmony singing, which is a spectacle.

Speaker 3 type of dance rhythms and innovative bass sounds like just every new idea that was unexplored in 1967, 68, and 69. Sly was the pioneer and the first person to do those things.

Speaker 2 So I want to play another Sly Track and talk about it with you because I found the film so interesting in really pointing to specifically what makes Sly's music so

Speaker 2 interesting and catchy and why so many people kind of, as you put it, use his vocabulary. So I want to play Everyday People because this has significance in a lot of ways.

Speaker 2 I mean, Sly's band is made up of black and white musicians, male and female musicians, and Everyday People speaks to inclusivity.

Speaker 2 So can you talk about that a little bit in terms of the types of music that are drawn on in Sly's music and the kind of inclusivity that he represented within the band and in some of his lyrics?

Speaker 3 Sly's role.

Speaker 3 Vernon Reed of Living Color kind of painted that, you know, this marks the first time that a black singer is kind of stepping out of the roles that we were traditionally playing.

Speaker 3 You know, before Sly, it was like you were strictly singing about love songs, in particular about relationships.

Speaker 3 You really weren't giving any commentary about everyday life or things that are relatable in the present to to the the artist you know to the audience that you're serving it's almost like

Speaker 3 music before sly was almost kind of a fantasy if you will like a means to escape your present situation and sly

Speaker 3 kind of uses his music as a means to

Speaker 3 sell humanity and everyday people is a great example um where he's essentially saying that hey like I breathe air like you do, I bleed like you do,

Speaker 3 there's some things that we have in common, there's some things that we don't have in common, but we're all the same person.

Speaker 3 And sometimes, especially, you know, during that period, during the civil rights period, especially with

Speaker 3 that time in which

Speaker 3 Martin Luther King has died and Malcolm X has died, Mecca Evers has died, and the Kennedys died, and kind of the dream of the civil rights period died.

Speaker 3 That kind of messaging

Speaker 3 at the time seemed very necessary for, you know, there was questions in the air, like, what do we do now? So Slide kind of accidentally

Speaker 3 inserts himself in the leadership position,

Speaker 3 kind of in the name of just

Speaker 3 trying to find relatable content to his lyrics because, you know, a lot of his music is very self-confessional and very relatable, kind of in a way that, you know, Dylan was also

Speaker 3 affecting music with his, you know, with his songs at the time. And

Speaker 3 I guess

Speaker 3 Sly wound up being the unofficial spokesperson for

Speaker 3 black people.

Speaker 2 Well, let's hear everyday people, and this is from 1969.

Speaker 2 Sometimes I'm right, and I can be wrong.

Speaker 2 My own beliefs are in my song.

Speaker 2 The richer, the bigger, the stronger, and then

Speaker 2 makes no difference what group I'm in.

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 am every day people,

Speaker 2 yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 There is a new one, and it's a green one for living on the pen.

Speaker 2 I know the spinning one, they're fine as frost

Speaker 2 for different holes.

Speaker 2 So and it's all it's gonna

Speaker 2 be good.

Speaker 2 We got to live together.

Speaker 2 I am no better,

Speaker 2 neither are you.

Speaker 2 We are the same, whatever we do.

Speaker 2 You love me, you hate me, you know me, and then

Speaker 2 you can figure out the bag again.

Speaker 2 I

Speaker 2 have every day

Speaker 2 long

Speaker 2 again.

Speaker 2 There is alone, never

Speaker 2 like a show, care for being such a rich one that will not have the bread. One different

Speaker 2 So that was Everyday People, which, as you pointed out, has a kind of nursery rhyme part to it. Yeah.

Speaker 3 There is a nun in.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and that has, like I said, the message of inclusivity and togetherness.

Speaker 2 But as someone in your documentary points out, that alienated a lot of black listeners in the sense that, you know, police were beating up black people,

Speaker 2 which, of course, you could say today as well. But it was a very,

Speaker 2 it was, and also like black power was becoming a thing. It was risky.

Speaker 3 Yeah, it was risky because, again, this song is released released

Speaker 3 right on the

Speaker 3 edge of the razor. Like, I mean, there's always a time in American history and, you know, today is no different.

Speaker 3 There's always a time in American history where we're just right on the edge, right on the precipice of like, you know,

Speaker 3 a kind of

Speaker 3 explosive

Speaker 3 end result, you know. And

Speaker 3 for someone to sort of come in waving a proverbial like white flag that's a risky thing because you know one we do see the evidence of the abuse that's given but it's also like who's going to be the first person to kind of come to to half court you know to the 50 yard line who's going to who's going to cross the aisle and

Speaker 3 you know, start a kumbaya moment and sort of dismantles whatever conflicts that we have. And

Speaker 3 that's the role that Sly's music played.

Speaker 3 Whereas,

Speaker 3 you know, the messaging of his music was always encouraging,

Speaker 3 always, you know, a cheerleader of

Speaker 3 justice and a cheerleader of positivity.

Speaker 3 And unfortunately,

Speaker 3 even though the music spoke of that optimism,

Speaker 3 inside he was sort of falling apart at the seams because there's a pressure of

Speaker 3 or a burden, which is why we call it the burden of black genius.

Speaker 3 There's a burden when one puts themselves in that position where they often have to come up with the solutions or the answers to why society is the way it is.

Speaker 2 My guest is Amir Questlove Thompson. His film Sly Lives, a.k.a.
The Burden of Black Genius, will start streaming on Hulu Thursday. We'll talk more after a break.

Speaker 2 I'm Terry Gross, and this is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 2 Well, you know, on the same album as Everyday People, his message about inclusivity, he has the song Stand.

Speaker 2 That's a message to take a stand, stand up for your rights, you know, demand your rights.

Speaker 2 And that resonated a lot within the black community.

Speaker 3 Stand Proud, yes.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so talk a little bit about that song and why you think that song is important musically and in terms of the message of the lyrics.

Speaker 3 So basically, Sly makes the song Stand

Speaker 3 and he completes the song and he has a kind of a test pressing demo made of it.

Speaker 3 And, you know, he takes this

Speaker 3 record demo to Whiskey a Gogo in Hollywood on Sunset Boulevard, which was, you know, the nightclub of the moment. And he gives the DJ the 45 to play.

Speaker 3 And the DJ puts it on. You know, it's like a proto-disco in 1969 where teenagers are dancing in the club.

Speaker 3 And, you know, the teenagers are dancing and the song ends.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 Sly was like really disappointed. He's like, man, like that song didn't hit the way I wanted it to.
And at the time, the girl that he was with was like, well, you know,

Speaker 3 you didn't put a get down part in. And he's like, well, what do you mean? He's like, you got to have a part in the song that just like wakes people up.
It makes them want to like really get down.

Speaker 3 And he's like, oh, a get-down part. And so he leaves the club that night.

Speaker 3 And around one in the morning, he calls the band together and says, hey, we need to add something to the the song that really just wakes it up out of nowhere. So kind of in the last

Speaker 3 minute and 15 seconds of the song,

Speaker 3 this tension-building kind of structure of the lyrics comes to this feverish, like climatic end where the song totally changes from what it was to something totally, completely different.

Speaker 3 And he creates a get-town part, what we will now know as a breakbeat.

Speaker 3 You know, the part of the song that sparks magic, that makes people really want to dance and get down to it.

Speaker 3 And I kind of think that was Sly's nod to the black community, you know, because by that point, Sly was such a pop hit, but he really didn't have much numbers on the board for his black audience.

Speaker 3 Like when he first came out the box, his white audience immediately latched onto him.

Speaker 3 And sometimes I know with certain black artists, even though it's unspoken, one of the burdens of black black genius is sometimes like the burden of being white people's favorite black person.

Speaker 3 You know, that's often like kind of a mark of shame, like, oh, man, I got to get right with my people first before the rest of the world loves me.

Speaker 3 So I almost feel as though in a sort of code switch way,

Speaker 3 he wanted to add a part to that song that really made black people say,

Speaker 3 oh,

Speaker 3 okay,

Speaker 3 he's still down with us. You know, so he adds this really funky part at the end that really solidifies his genius.

Speaker 2 So let's play that transitional part. So we hear some of the main song, and then we hear what it transitions to at the end.

Speaker 3 They will try to make you crawl.

Speaker 3 And they know what you're saying makes sense at all. Stand.

Speaker 3 Don't you know that you are free?

Speaker 3 Well, at least in your mind, if you want to be

Speaker 3 everybody.

Speaker 2 So that was Stan, which is on the same 1969 album as Everyday People. And those two songs have a kind of contrast, like I said before, inclusivity and like stand up for your rights.

Speaker 2 And at this time, it's a catchy song, but it's also like a message song. And the Panthers, the Black Panthers, who are very active at this time, it's 1969, become really interested in Sly.

Speaker 2 And there's this really interesting part of the movie that talks about how the Panthers said, you need to join our group, or you need to donate $100,000 to our group, to which Sly responds, give me a reason.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, the thing is, is that

Speaker 3 one of the burdens, especially with black success,

Speaker 3 is that, you know, you might lose yourself.

Speaker 3 And oftentimes, like, look, I'll be very honest with you.

Speaker 3 Even though

Speaker 3 my experience with Summer of Soul was one of the most magical, transformative moments of my life,

Speaker 3 there were many a time where,

Speaker 3 you know, besides the Oscar, like there were like 40 other awards that I won also in the circuit of film festivals. And, you know, by the 20th, I would tell

Speaker 3 my manager, Zara, I'm like, man, like, can we pull out of some of these things? Like, there's a fear of winning because if you're too successful, then you're singled out.

Speaker 3 And being singled out for positive reasons or negative reasons is such a nightmare for most black people. And yes, in this case,

Speaker 3 because

Speaker 3 you're going to be separated. Like for a lot of black people, it's you come up in a neighborhood, you know your next door neighbors, you spend the night at your cousin's house.

Speaker 3 And then in a snap, suddenly, you know,

Speaker 3 I'm a Macaulay Calkins character staying at the Four Seasons Hotel, like by myself in the lap of luxury. And

Speaker 3 that's an alienating feeling because you can't take everyone with you. You can't save everyone.

Speaker 3 You know, I grew up in a neighborhood in which I had between the two neighbor, you know, my grandmother's house and my house, like I had 30 plus friends. And now it's just four of us.

Speaker 3 Like I'm one of four who's not dead or in jail. And so

Speaker 3 there's a constant like, why me? Why was I chosen? My cousin was just as as smart as I was. And that person plays drums better than me.
Like, they should have been in this position. Like,

Speaker 3 there's an imposter syndrome thing that happens and just a feeling of guilt that one feels. And, you know, the Panthers sort of

Speaker 3 approached Sly and was like, okay, well, you know, you're talking about these political subjects that we're about. So we want you to be our leader and fund our movement.

Speaker 3 And Sly fundamentally doesn't necessarily agree. Like he's not that revolutionary, even though he has the ability to channel in the feeling of a revolutionary.
So, what winds up happening is

Speaker 3 for every time the pressure is on Sly to prove his blackness, the more success he gets, he just winds up, his only answer is to create blacker music. So, you know,

Speaker 3 the pressure of everyday people leads to stand, and then the pressure of stand leads to basically the ribbon cutting of funk, the very first funk song, which is Thank You for Let Me Be Myself Again.

Speaker 3 You know, it's kind of like this brilliant deflection thing, like his version of,

Speaker 3 hey guys, what's that over there? You know, it may turn around, and then like he's gone. Instead, he'll just say,

Speaker 3 Here's an even funkier song to blue that I'm super black. You know, and

Speaker 3 that's kind of how he gets out these situations. He has to performatively

Speaker 3 become more blacker in his music, you know, and to the point where the pinnacle of it will be his fifth album, which is There's a Riot Going On, which every critic salivates over that album, like, oh my God, it's the most amazing funk album ever.

Speaker 3 Yes, it's the very first funk album, but for me, it's probably 41 of the most painful

Speaker 3 documented minutes in a creator's life. Like, this is clearly someone

Speaker 3 who

Speaker 3 is an unwilling participant in his journey. Like, I hear someone crying for help, but because the music is so awesome and so mind-blowing, you know, we wind up fetishizing

Speaker 3 his art and you don't see the pain of it or the fact that black pain is so beautiful. Like the sound of Aretha Franklin's voice, like, yeah, we'll say, like, it's so soulful.

Speaker 3 So, but no, that Aretha Franklin's voice is the sound

Speaker 3 of a woman who never had a relationship with her own mother, whose mother rejected her. And

Speaker 3 when you hear her beautiful voice, that's the sound of pain. So somehow, you know,

Speaker 3 a lot of black music that we love, you know, the sound of Ray Charles's voice, the sound of Stevie Wonder's voice, the sound. What we're really

Speaker 3 getting off on is

Speaker 3 their pain, which

Speaker 3 I'm guilty of it, but, you know, it's problematic and it's also a pleasure, you know, and I feel guilty that sometimes I get off on

Speaker 3 someone's pain.

Speaker 2 Yeah, but isn't that because we all have pain and we like music that understands pain and puts our pain into something beautiful.

Speaker 3 We do, but see, here's the problem with that, though.

Speaker 3 One of my mentors who passed away, a writer Greg Tate, he wrote a book called Everything But the Burden.

Speaker 3 And what that essentially means is that oftentimes black art, black pain

Speaker 3 is just so beautiful that oftentimes, you know, we'll take everything. We'll take the dancing.
we'll take the fashion, we'll take the lingo, we'll take the singing, we'll take everything

Speaker 3 but the burden and the pain that it takes to

Speaker 3 reach that level of art.

Speaker 3 For me, one of the best examples, every time I DJ,

Speaker 3 there's a song by James Brown called It's a New Day.

Speaker 3 And probably three minutes into that song,

Speaker 3 James Brown does a level of screaming that is beyond just ad-libs.

Speaker 3 Like every time I DJ this song, like I, it's so awesomely danceable and funky, but also like so painful to hear because, you know, James Brown is a person that was an orphan that grew up in a brothel.

Speaker 3 His mother gave him away. His father gave him away.
So that feeling of rejection he had all of his life, all that pain is coming out in this song. And, you know, that's kind of the thing.

Speaker 3 It's everything but the burden.

Speaker 3 That's kind of the empathetic way that we wanted to

Speaker 3 paint this story. That, you know, because people often just say, like, wow, he had everything and he was a genius.
And then he chose drugs. And for me.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I hear you. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah. For me, it's like, what happened in his life that made him want to choose drugs? And that's the question that no one could answer.
Like, especially like when I interviewed Clive Davis.

Speaker 3 And Clive has a history of, you know, there's Janice Joplin, there's Whitney Houston, there's Sly Stone, there's, you know, all these artists that have sort of famously succumbed to darker demons.

Speaker 3 And, you know, I kind of asked him, like, well,

Speaker 3 you know, I think it's more than just like, oh, he was hanging with the wrong crowd and, you know, chose cocaine instead. And

Speaker 3 when I asked him, like, what circumstances do you think that he was going through during that period he was on your label that

Speaker 3 you might not have been aware of. And this is definitely not just a story of Sly Stone.
This is a story of anyone I've ever worked with.

Speaker 3 This is a story of Frank Ocean or Lauren Hill or Dave Chappelle, Kanye West, like anyone who's ever been mired in trouble. Anyone you ever ask, like, why are they doing this? Like,

Speaker 3 everyone goes through this.

Speaker 2 My guest is Quest Love. His new documentary about Sly Stone is called Sly Lives, aka The Burden of Black Genius.
It'll start streaming on Hulu Thursday. We'll talk more after a break.

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Speaker 2 So to illustrate the point that you were making about pain in music, let's listen to Family Affair, which is a song about, you know, kind of what you're saying, that one person does really well and other people in the family don't.

Speaker 2 And there's a lot of pain within the family.

Speaker 2 So this is Family Affair, Sly in the Family Stone.

Speaker 2 It's a family of faith,

Speaker 2 it's a family of faith,

Speaker 2 it's a family of faith,

Speaker 2 it's a family of faith

Speaker 3 One child grows up to be

Speaker 3 somebody that just loves to learn

Speaker 3 Another child

Speaker 3 grows up to be

Speaker 3 somebody you just loved, burner

Speaker 3 mom loves

Speaker 3 the both of them.

Speaker 3 You see, it's in the blood.

Speaker 3 Both kids are good and bomb.

Speaker 3 Blood sticker than the mud. It's a family of fair.

Speaker 3 It's a family affair. It's a family of fair.

Speaker 2 That was Sly and the Family Stone. My guest is Amir Questlove-Thompson.
His new documentary about the group and about Sly in particular is called Sly Lives, The Burden of Black Genius.

Speaker 2 So, you know, we talked about this a little bit. The subtitle of your film is The Burden of Black Genius.

Speaker 2 And your theory is that for black artists in America, success can be more terrifying than failure for the reasons that that you described.

Speaker 2 What do you think the burden included for Sly?

Speaker 2 Like, what were the personal burdens in his life in addition to being singled out and how singled out can mean removed from your own people?

Speaker 2 What are some of the personal burdens that you think he also shouldered?

Speaker 3 One, to

Speaker 3 the pressure of writing game-changing music. You know, Sly is the first person to use a drum machine.
Sly is kind of the pioneer of the bedroom, do-it-all-yourself musician.

Speaker 3 You know, there's the pressure of feeding the machine, of writing the hits, of keep winning. You know, there's the idea of what

Speaker 3 you are versus who you really are.

Speaker 3 You know, as the generations go on, like Sly was unable to do that. And when he drops the baton, there was someone in the wings waiting to pick that baton up.

Speaker 3 And at the time, that person was 12 years old. And that person's name was Michael Joseph Jackson.
So Michael Jackson will wind up picking up the baton

Speaker 3 of what should have happened to Sly.

Speaker 3 And then 10 years later, 1982, Michael himself will go through that same process of being the chosen one, being the God, being the unifier, being the center of attention, and then suddenly he'll just wind up on a kind of a hamster wheel of chasing perfection.

Speaker 3 And this happens to everyone. This Prince, Whitney Houston.
It's that level of pressure that one puts on themselves, you know, and there's just no space for humanity.

Speaker 3 in entertainment, but especially in black entertainment. So

Speaker 3 I feel as though now's the time to have that conversation because I feel as though, especially with black people, we are now in a space where

Speaker 3 we are open

Speaker 3 to

Speaker 3 things like the discussion of therapy and mental health.

Speaker 2 I want to pick up on that because I think that genius is often accompanied by

Speaker 2 or fueled by some kind of mental health issue, whether it's OCD or bipolar disorder, that

Speaker 2 there's something

Speaker 2 within you where you are wired to not necessarily be happy, but you are wired to do music or painting or writing or and like you kind of have no choice. But,

Speaker 2 and there's even been like studies about this, you know, that

Speaker 2 you can have some kind of mental health issue and that is often, you know, self-medicated with drugs.

Speaker 2 And I'm not trying to deny any of the things you said about how black artists have a burden that white artists don't. So I'm just trying to add.

Speaker 3 Well, yeah,

Speaker 3 this became a serious point of contention with kind of me and the Disney organization and

Speaker 3 the idea of like, well, is this the burden of genius or the burden of black genius?

Speaker 3 The difference between black genius and regular genius is that, you know, most white artists aren't,

Speaker 3 their feet aren't going to be held to the fire of, you know, remind yourself that

Speaker 3 you're Italian, you know, make sure you keep up your German roots.

Speaker 2 Put some Yiddish in that song.

Speaker 3 Yeah, exactly. Like there's when you have black success,

Speaker 3 nine times out of ten, you're going to go in the history books because it's just so pioneering.

Speaker 3 And you better make us proud and you better not mess up or embarrass us. I think right now we're just starting to have that conversation about how do we feel inside, you know, our humanity.

Speaker 2 You talked the last time you were on our show about the importance of vulnerability and how it's time to talk about vulnerability and express vulnerability.

Speaker 3 So these next six projects I'm working on, this will be the common denominator.

Speaker 3 I touch on this in the Earth, Wind and Fire doc, which comes out in September. And with Sly,

Speaker 3 it's also about

Speaker 3 humanity and vulnerability, which, you know, is sometimes just way too risky to figure out will you get penalized if you are over-sharing too much because some people might not be able to handle it.

Speaker 2 My guest is Amir Kweslov Thompson. His new documentary, Sly Lives, a.k.a.
The Burden of Black Genius, will start streaming on Hulu Thursday, February 13th. We'll be right back.
This is Fresh Air.

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Speaker 2 You talked to Sly,

Speaker 2 and

Speaker 2 I don't know how much he participated in the movie, but how would you describe him now? He's in his early 80s. He's clean.
He hasn't used drugs. I'm not sure how long, but he's off of them as far as

Speaker 3 he's been clean for about kind of close to a decade.

Speaker 3 And that's why we called it Sly Lives. Like, the irony of all this is that all of his disciples

Speaker 3 unfortunately didn't make it, but yet Sly

Speaker 3 is still with us.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 for me, like, my favorite part of that film is when his kids describe what his life is like now. Like, I love the fact that Novina Caramel from

Speaker 3 KCRW in LA says that, you know, like,

Speaker 3 he loves pizza with pineapples on it. He loves, you know, watching old Westerns.
He loves driving new cars.

Speaker 3 The first time I saw a slide drive, he was driving a very unusual, I don't know what kind of car that was, but just the fact that he has an everyday

Speaker 3 normal existence. Like he plays with his grandkids.
Like he,

Speaker 3 he's just

Speaker 3 a normal guy, which to me,

Speaker 3 that speaks volumes. Like to be normal, to be human, you know not not to be the scary black guy not to be the the over sexualized person

Speaker 3 but just a normal relatable everyday person to me that's the dream

Speaker 2 Amir it's been so great to talk with you and

Speaker 3 I just like all these projects you're doing it's really remarkable I really look forward to the Earth Wind and Fire move you know well whenever I do a press run this this is one of my favorite highlights and you know I'm so glad that for the last 20-plus years, like, this has sort of been like the springboard for my projects coming out.

Speaker 3 And I thank you for receiving it.

Speaker 2 Amir Questlove-Thompson's new film is called Sly Lives, a.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius.
It will start streaming on Hulu Thursday. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, my guest will be Sebastian Stan.

Speaker 2 He's nominated for an Oscar for his performance as Donald Trump in the film The Apprentice, and he won a Golden Globe last month for his role in A Different Man.

Speaker 2 We'll talk about his early childhood in communist Romania and his path to the U.S. and acting, including his performances in multiple Marvel movies.
I hope you'll join us.

Speaker 2 To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPRFresh Air.

Speaker 2 Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham.
Our managing producer is Sam Brigger.

Speaker 2 Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Marie Bodonato, Lauren Crenzel, Teresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Faya Chaloner, Susan Yakundi, Anna Bauman, and Joel Wolfram.

Speaker 2 Our digital media producer is Molly C. V.
Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show.
Our co-host is Tanya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.

Speaker 3 If you want me to stay, I'll be around today

Speaker 3 to be a failure

Speaker 3 for you to see.

Speaker 3 I'm about to go

Speaker 3 and then you'll know for me to stay here.

Speaker 4 I got to be me

Speaker 3 You'll never be in doubt, that's what it's all about.

Speaker 3 You can't take me for granted and smile

Speaker 3 by phone. Because I promise I'll be gone for a while.

Speaker 3 When you see me again, I hope that you have been the kind of person

Speaker 3 that you really are now.

Speaker 3 Got to get in straight. How could I ever be late? When you're my woman, checking up my

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