Fresh Air - Questlove On Sly Stone & The Burden Of Black Genius

Episode Date: February 10, 2025

Questlove is back to talk about his new documentary about Sly Stone and his band the Family Stone. They created a new sound with their mix of pop, soul, funk, psychedelic music and irresistible beats. The film is called SLY LIVES! (aka The Burden of Black Genius) and it streams on Hulu beginning Feb. 13.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Fresh Air. I'm Cherry Gross. Today, Amir Kwestlove Thompson is back to talk about the life and legacy of Sly Stone. Thank you for letting me be myself again. Thank you for letting me be myself again Questlove's new documentary called Sly Lives, aka The Burden of Black Genius, is about the impact of Sly Stone and his band Sly and the Family Stone on music and culture. 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. Their music influenced Prince, George Clinton and Funkadelic, The Ohio Players, Earth, Wind, and Fire, and many hip-hop artists. 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. Questlove is the co-founder of the hip-hop band The Roots, which is the house band for The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. 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 that one's called ladies and gentlemen 50 years of SNL music Questlove's 2021 documentary summer of soul featuring performances from the 1969 Harlem cultural festival won an Oscar for best documentary So let's talk about your slide documentary. I really love this film. 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 eight? This is 1968. OK. So what makes this song so special in its moment? Sly will invent the alphabet for which most of pop and R&B or black music will write from for 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.

How many micro songs can we have in this particular song? In other words, a typical Sly the Family Stone song has a bunch of elements that will grab everybody. Like most songs will just have one specific hook. Like this is the chorus, this is my hook, okay, here are my lyrics. Instead, Sly will do a four-bar part that's like earworm, you know, like that'll grab you,

and then he'll do another four bars that will grab someone else. So, you know, lyrically and melodic-wise, or grab someone else. So, you know, lyrically and melodic wise, his formula is also the world's funkiest nursery rhyme music. If, like, look at Everyday People, his number one hit. Everyone knows Everyday People. Everyday People is basically the schoolyard version,

like the lyrics of that song, the melody of that song, is basically schoolyard version, like the lyrics of that song, the melody of that song is basically schoolyard taunting. Nyan, nyan, nyan, nyan, nyan, nyan, nyan, nyan, nyan, nyan. There is a black one who doesn't like the... And his whole thing is like, if it can appeal to a kid, to a first grader, then melodically you have them. And rhythmically, his rhythm section, Gregorico on drums and Larry Graham on bass,

specifically Larry Graham's right thumb are probably the two most revolutionary aspects of Sly's music. And that's because Larry Graham is a bass player who used to play in bands without a drummer. 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, once he's in the Sly system, he events kind of a thumping, plucking thing, which I guess most of your listeners would probably be familiar with the way that the Seinfeld theme sounds, or the way that Flea plays in the Red Hot Chili Peppers, like with his thumb. Larry Graham from Sly and the Family Stone, aka Drake's uncle. Oh, really? Literally?

Yeah. Well, 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 because they look alike. But yeah, he revolutionized a way to play bass. 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 Sly Stone. All right. Thank you for that. Let's hear a Dance to the Music. The music. All we need is a drummer For people who only need a beatin' yeah I'm gonna add a little good talk And make it easy to move your feet I'm gonna add some bottom So that the dancer just won't have You might like to hear my organ I'll set them right, Sally, right now Cynthia, tell me what If I could hear the horns blow, set the air on the throne. Yeah! Listen to me, Cynthia and Jerry got a message that said,

all the squads go home! So that was Sly and the Family Stones, 1968 hit, Dance to the Music. And the drumming is so infectious. It's like, it's hard not to move. Yes. When you hear that. And it's not fancy. So what people don't know is that Sly basically considered

Dance to the Music like his sellout song. 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, just so ahead of its time that only a certain few latched onto it. And the rejection of that album kind of depressed Sly and his label said, look, you're doing way too much. You're doing way too much.

You got to simplify it. People aren't as smart as you are. 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, um, scoffy way, like, he's like, all right, well, people want to dance to the music, fine.

And so, he did a very sarcastic thing. And so he's like, all right, well, people want to dance to the music, fine. I'm going to a very sarcastic thing. And so he's like, all right, well, people want to dance to the music, fine. I'm going to make a song and I'm going to teach them how to dance to my music. And essentially, Dance to the Music is an instructional introduction on who we are. Hey, I play the bass. I play the drums. I play the keyboards. And literally, that's the song. 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 people grasp to it. And so it, Dance of the Music is one of those accidental

number one songs that he didn't intend on catching on. It was more of like a, 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. And people gravitated towards it, so. But there's a lot going on in that song, including like the kind of scatting part.

Yeah, so what he includes is, you know, a very, you know, the drum beat 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 sixties, four on the floor means that the snare, the kick, and the hi-hat are all doing... Choo-choo, choo-choo, choo-choo, choo-choo, choo-choo.

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. And that will be the disco rhythm you know what we call boots and cats boots cats boots cats boots and cats so Sly will basically kind of give you the prototype of what will be the disco pulse in the late 60s but you know he's he's writing the blueprint of what modern dance music will be in 10 years.

But then he also does a lot of things that become beats for hip hop artists later. Yes, so again, Sly believes in micro examples. Another artist will make one hook, one melody, one lyric, you know, like just one thing where Sly will probably try to cram in seven ideas at the same time. Like Sly puts a lot of attention to harmony, 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.

Unison singing is where everyone sings in the same register. So think of the idea of when Billy Joel's piano man comes on. That's the type of song that you hear in a bar, and everyone sings together as they hold their mug of beer and sing along. So 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. So he knew the power of unison singing,

which is included, and harmony singing, which is a spectacle and 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. 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 interesting and catchy and why so many people, as you put it, use his vocabulary. So I want to play everyday people because this has significance in a lot of ways. I mean, Sly's band is made up of black and white musicians, male and female

musicians, and every day people speaks to inclusivity. 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? Sly's role, Vernon Reed of Living Color kind of painted that, this marks the first time that a black singer is kind of stepping out of the roles

that we were traditionally playing. You know, before Sly, it was like you were strictly singing about love songs, in particular about relationships. You really weren't giving any commentary about everyday life or things that are relatable in the present to the artist, you know, to the audience that you're serving. It's almost like music before Sly was almost kind of a fantasy, if you will, like a means to escape your present situation. And Sly kind of uses his music as a means to sell humanity. And Everyday People's a great example where he's

essentially saying that, hey, like, I breathe air like you do, I bleed like you do. 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. And sometimes, especially during that period, during the civil rights period, especially with that time in which Martin Luther King has died and Malcolm X has died and Mecca Ephrath has died and the Kennedys died and kind of the dream of the civil rights period died. That kind of messaging at the time seemed very necessary for, you know, there was questions in the air, like, what do we do now? So Slyde kind of accidentally inserts himself in the leadership position, kind of in the

name of just 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 affecting music with his, at the time. And I guess Sly wound up being the unofficial spokesperson for Black people. Well, let's hear Everyday People, and this is from 1969. Sometimes I'm right, and I get me wrong My own beliefs are in my song The picture, the figure, the drama and then Makes no difference what group I'm in I have everyday people There is a new one

And it's at the green one For living on the pack Trying to be the skinny one Different strokes for different folks So one and so one school, what do we do? We got to live together, you know better than neither or you, we are the same whatever we do. You Yeah. There is a long man that doesn't like the short. Therefore, being such a rich man, that will not get the money. One day, he'll get the stuff, or lift the clothes.

And so on and so on, it's good that we do. He's a strong shot. We got to live together. So that was Everyday People, which as you pointed out, has a kind of nursery rhyme part to it. Yeah. There is a... Yeah, and that has, like I said, the message of inclusivity and togetherness. 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, which of course you could say today as well. But it was a very, it was, and also like black like Black Power was becoming a thing. It was risky. Yeah, it was risky because, again, the song is released right on the edge of the razor. There's always a time in American history, and today is no different. There's always a time in American history where we're just right on the edge,

right on the precipice of like, you know, a kind of explosive end result, you know. And for someone to sort of come in waving a proverbial like white flag, that's a risky thing because, you know, one, 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 gonna be the first person to kind of come to half court, you know,

to the 50 yard line, who's gonna cross the aisle and, you know, start a kumbaya moment and sort of dismantles whatever conflicts that we have. And that's the role that Sly's music played. Whereas, the messaging of his music was always encouraging, always, you know, a cheerleader of justice and a cheerleader of positivity. And unfortunately, even though the music spoke of that optimism, inside he was sort of falling apart at the seams because there's a pressure of, or a burden, which is why we call it the burden of Black genius.

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. My guest is Amir Questlove Thompson. His film Sly Lives, aka The Burden of Black Genius, will start streaming on Hulu Thursday. We'll talk more after a break. I'm Terry take you higher. Baby, baby, baby, like my fire. I'm gonna take you higher.

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fresh. Hi, this is Molly Seabee Nesbitt, digital producer at Fresh Air. And this is Terri Gross, host of the show. One of the things I do is write the weekly newsletter. And I'm a newsletter fan. I read it every Saturday after breakfast. The newsletter includes all the week's shows, staff recommendations, and Molly picks timely highlights from the archive.

It's a fun read. It's also the only place where we tell you what's coming up next week, an exclusive. So subscribe at whyy.org slash fresh air and look for an email from Molly every Saturday morning. Well, you know, on the same album as Everyday People, his message about inclusivity, he has the song Stand. That's a message to take a stand, stand up for your rights, you know, demand your rights. And that resonated a lot within the black community.

Stan Proud, yes. 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. So basically Sly makes the song, Stand, and he completes the song and he has a kind of a test pressing demo made of it. And he takes this record demo to Whiskey-A-Gogo in Hollywood, on Sunset Boulevard, which was the nightclub of the moment. And he gives the DJ the 45 to play.

And the DJ puts it on, it's like a proto disco in 1969 where teenagers are dancing in the club. And you know, the teenagers are dancing and the song ends and Sly was like really disappointed. He's like, man, like the 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, 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 and makes them want to, like, really get down. And he's like, oh, a get-down part. And so he leaves the club that night, and around 1 in the morning, he calls the band together and says, hey, we need to add something to the song that really just wakes it up out of nowhere. So kind of in the last minute and 15 seconds of the song, this tension building kind of

structure of the lyrics comes to this feverish climatic end where the song totally changes from what it was to something totally completely different. And he creates a get down part. What we will now know as a break beat. You know, the part of the song that sparks magic that makes people really want to dance and get down to it. 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. Like, when he first came out the box,

his white audience immediately latched on to him. And sometimes I know with certain black artists, even though it's unspoken, one of the burdens of black genius is sometimes, like, the burden of being white people's favorite black person. You know, that's often, like, kind of a mark of shame, like, ah, man, I got to get right with my people first before the rest of the world loves me.

So I almost feel as though, in a sort of code switch way he wanted to add a part to that song that really made black people say, oh okay he's still down with us. You know so he adds this really funky part at the end that really solidifies his genius. 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. It's an all-out stand Don't you know that you are free? Well, at least in your mind if you want to be Everybody! Yeah!

Yeah! Yeah! Na-na-na-na-na na. Yeah! Na na na na na na na na na na. Yeah! Na na na na na na na na na na. Yeah! Na na na na na na na na na na. Yeah! Na na na na na na na na na na. Yeah!

Na na na na na na na na na na. Yeah! Na na na na na na na na na na. Yeah! Na na na na na na na na na na. Yeah! Na na na na na na na na na na. Yeah!

Na na na na na na na na na na. Yeah! Na na na na na na na na na na. Yeah! Na na na na na na na na na na. Yeah! Na na na na na na na na na na. Yeah! Na na na na na na na na na na. Yeah! So that was Stand, 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. 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. And there's this really interesting part of the movie that talks about how the panther said You need to join our group or you need to donate a hundred thousand dollars to our group to which sly responds

Give me a reason Yeah, I mean the thing is is that one of the burdens especially with black success is That you know, you might lose yourself. And oftentimes, like, look, I'll be very honest with you. Even though my experience with Summer of Soul was one of the most magical, transformative moments of my life, there were many a time where, 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 my manager's there, I'm like, man, like, can we pull out of some of these things? Like, there's a fear of some of these things? There's a fear of winning because if you're too successful,

then you're singled out. And being singled out for positive reasons or negative reasons is such a nightmare for most black people. And yes, in this case- Why? Because you're 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. And then in a snap, suddenly, you know, I'm a Macaulay Culkin's character staying at the Four Seasons Hotel, like, by myself, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like,

I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, I'm like, house and my house, like I had 30 plus friends. And now it's just four of us. Like I'm one of four who's not dead or in jail. And so there's a constant like, why me? Why was I chosen?

My cousin was just as smart as I was and that person plays drums better than me. Like they should have been in this position. Like there's an imposter syndrome thing that happens and just a feeling of guilt that one feels. And, you know, the Panthers sort of approach 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. 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 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, the pressure of everyday people leads to Stan. And then the pressure of Stan leads to basically the ribbon cutting of funk, the very first funk song, which is, Thank you for letting me be myself again. You know, it's kind of like this brilliant deflection thing. Like his version of, uh, hey, guys, what's that over there? You know, huh?

And they turn around, and then, like, he's gone. Instead, he'll just say, uh, here's an even funkier song to pollute that I'm super black. You know, and that's kind of how he gets out of these situations. He has to performatively 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. Yes, it's the very first funk album, but for me it's probably 41 of the most painful documented minutes in a

creator's life. Like, this is clearly someone who 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 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. So, but no, Aretha Franklin's voice is the sound of a woman who never had a relationship with her own mother, whose mother rejected her. And when you hear her beautiful voice, that's the sound of pain. So somehow, you know, a lot of black music that we love, you know, the sound of Ray Charles' voice,

the sound of Stevie Wonder's voice, what we're really getting off on is their pain, which 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 someone's pain. Yeah, but isn't that because we all have pain and we like music that understands pain and puts our pain into something beautiful? We do, but see, here's the problem with that though. One of my mentors who passed away, writer Greg Tate, he wrote a book called Everything

But The Burden. burden. And what that essentially means is that oftentimes black art, black pain, 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 but the burden and the pain that it takes to reach that level of art. For me, one of the best examples, every time I DJ, there's a song by James Brown called It's a New Day. And probably three minutes into that song, James Brown does a level of screaming that is beyond just ad-libs. Every time I DJ this song, it's so awesomely danceable and funky, but also so painful to hear because James Brown is a person that was an orphan that grew up in a brothel. 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. It's everything but the burden. That's kind of the empathetic way that we wanted to 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, 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. And Clive has a history of, you know,

there's Janis 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. And, you know, I kind of asked him like, well, 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 when more than just like, oh, he was hanging with the wrong crowd and chose cocaine instead.

And when I asked him, what circumstances do you think that he was going through during that period he was on your label that 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. This is the story of Frank Ocean or Laur This is the story of anyone I've ever worked with. This is the 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, everyone goes through this. My guest is Questlove. 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. This is Fresh Air. 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. And there's a lot of pain within the family. Um, so, uh, this is Family Affair, Sly and the Family Stone. It's a family affair Another child grows up to be somebody that just loves to learn And another child grows up to be somebody you just love to burn Mom loves the both of them, you see it's in the blood. Both kids are good and wrong. Blood's thicker than the mud.

It's a family affair. It's a family affair. It's a family affair. It's a family affair. Water over there. Water over there. That was Sly and the Family Stone. My guest is Amir Kwestlove Thompson. His new documentary about the group and about Sly in particular is called Sly Lives, The

Burden of Black Genius. So we talked about this a little bit. The subtitle of your film is The Burden of Black Genius. And your theory is that for black artists in America, success can be more terrifying than failure for the reasons that you described. What do you think the burden included for Sly? 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.

What are some of the personal burdens that you think he also shouldered? One to the pressure of writing game-changing music. Sly is the first person to use a drum machine. Sly is kind of the pioneer of the bedroom, do-it-all-yourself musician. There's the pressure of feeding the machine, of writing the hits, of keep winning. There's the idea of what you are versus who you really are.

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. 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 of what should have happened to Sly. And then 10 years later, in 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 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 in entertainment but especially in black entertainment. So, 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 we are open to things like the discussion of therapy and mental health.

I want to pick up on that because I think that genius is often accompanied by or fueled by some kind of mental health issue, whether it's OCD or bipolar disorder, that there's something 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, but, and there's even been like studies about this, you know, that you can have some kind of mental health issue and that is often, you know, self-medicated with drugs. 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.

Well, yeah, this became a serious point of contention with, you know, kind of me and the Disney organization and, you know, the idea of like, well, is this the burden of genius or the burden of black genius? The difference between black genius and regular genius is that, you know, most white artists aren't, their feet aren't going to be held to the fire of, you know, remind yourself that you're you're you're Italian You know make sure you keep up your your German roots and put some Yiddish in that song Yeah, exactly like there's when you have black success

Nine times out of ten you're gonna go in the history books because it's just so pioneering 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. You talk the last time you were on our show about the importance of vulnerability. Yeah. And how it's time to talk about vulnerability and express vulnerability. So these next six projects I'm working on, this will be the common denominator. I touch on this in the Earth, Wind, and Fire doc,

which comes out in September. And with Sly, it's also about humanity and vulnerability, which, you know, is sometimes just way too risky to figure out, will you get penalized if you are oversharing too much? Because some people might not be able to handle it. My guest is Amir Kwestlov Thompson. His new documentary, Sly Lives, AKA The Burden of Black Genius,

will start streaming on Hulu Thursday, February 13th. We'll be right back. This is Fresh Air. You talk to Sly, and 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, and I'm not sure how long, but he's off of them as far as I can tell.

Yeah, he's been clean for about kind of close to a decade. And that's why we called it Sly Lives. The irony of all this is that all of his disciples unfortunately didn't make it, but yet Sly is still with us. And 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 Novena Caramel from KCRW in LA says that, you know, like, he loves pizza with pineapples on it. He loves, you know, watching old westerns. He loves driving new cars.

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 normal existence, like he plays with his grandkids, like he's just a normal guy, which to me, that speaks volumes, like to be normal, to be human, you know, not to be the scary black guy, not to be the over-sexualized person, but just a normal, relatable, everyday person. To me, that's the dream.

I mean, it's been so great to talk with you. And I just think all these projects you're doing, it's really remarkable. I really look forward to the Earth, Wind and Fire movie now. Well, whenever I do a press run, 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 the springboard for my projects coming out. And I thank you for receiving it.

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

To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPRFreshAir. Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our managing producer is Sam Brigger. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Bultinato, Lauren Crenzel, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Challener, Susan Yacundi, Anna Baumann, and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show.

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