The new documentary Sly Lives! (aka The Burden Of Black Genius) has been released and met with praise. Since then, the film’s producer, Joseph Patel, took an opportunity to speak about the documentary and the steps taken to put it all together. 

One aspect of the film that Patel spoke to specifically was the depiction of Sly Stone, the documentary’s focus, grappling with rehabilitation and trying to overcome the struggles of his life despite his success. Specifically, he mentioned the way Stone addressed his problems. 

“It was just like, there was no language for what he was experiencing. Rehab had a stigma, therapy had a stigma. And that wasn’t that long ago, that was in the ’80s,” he said. 

Sly Lives!, directed by Questlove, put Stone’s career under a microscope and analyzed much of his success with his band, Sly & The Family Stone, while also addressing much of the turmoil that he faced. 

While speaking to UltimateClassicRock.com, who gave Patel a full-fledged interview on the film, one thing brought up was the project being made without Stone’s participation. The reasoning behind it, which was cited directly from Patel, was his deteriorating motor functions and the inability to form full sentences. 

Explaining the existence of a plethora of archive footage of Stone himself, Patel mentioned that trying to broach it any further would have directly clashed with the empathetic approach that the documentary was based on. 

Similarly, they also got other stars who knew Stone to speak on their experiences. 

“So when we brought them in to talk about Sly, they’re talking about Sly, but they’re also talking about themselves, and that was a kind of cool little layer to the story that makes this far from traditional music documentaries,” he said. 

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