(That last one was also the headline ofits creatorsRolling Stonecover story.
)You know every one of these tracks.
If youre not automatically singing their hooks Diff-rent/Strokes!/For diff-rent/Folks!
Sly Stone, performing at the 1969 Woodstock Festival.Warner Bros/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
that follows it.Sly Lives!
that exclamation point is earned knows it doesnt need to sell you on dancin to the music.
Sly the Once-in-a-Generation Artist too often gets short shrift.
(Even thememoir, published last year on Thompsons literary imprint, feels slightly lopsided.)
This doc sets the scales straight.
It favors the albums themselves over the criminal record.
Theres no blueprint for what comes next, notes author and academic Mark Anthony Neal about Stones post-Woodstock moment.
There is no Black Elvis.
Questlove Says the Answer Is Complicated
‘Sly Lives!’
What did Slys flameout teach them?
How did him becoming Black Elvis lead the way for others to walk their own pitfall-laden path?
Sly Lives!isnt built to answer those queries, just to offer them up.
Knock-you-on-your-ass quotes are puchased in bulk: how Stand!
The one that arguably sticks with you the most, however, belongs to Family Stone saxophonist Jerry Martini.
I was a white man trying to be Black, he says.
[Sly] was a Black man trying to beeverything.
It nearly killed him.
But it also produced music that lives to this day.
Questloves movie gives you both.
For that, we echo our own Sly favorites title back to him: Thank You.
