Sly Stone's daughter says she once took a razor blade and snorted sidewalk chalk to imitate her dad's drug use

Sly Stone's struggles with cocaine have been well documented, even, at times, eclipsing his achievements as an artist.

But the new documentary Sly Lives! A.k.a. The Burden of Black Genius, which made its premiere at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival on Thursday night, seeks to restore Stone's legacy to its rightful place in music history, while also interrogating the pressures that led to his fall from grace. That involves the film revealing some of the darker aspects and repercussions of Stone's addiction, including a disturbing anecdote from his daughter Phunne Stone.

Phunne is the child of Stone and his Sly and the Family Stone bandmate Cynthia Robinson, and in Sly Lives! she tells a story of how she once tried to imitate her father's drug use as a little girl.

Related: Questlove finds joyful noise in his directorial debut Summer of Soul: Sundance review

According to Phuune, Sly had left numerous razor blades around the house that he and his friends used to prepare cocaine before snorting it through dollar bills. One day, she says, she took a blade and sliced up her sidewalk chalk, encouraging her friends to join her in snorting it with rolled-up Monopoly money. She explains that as a small child she was only doing what she had seen her father and his buddies do, without realizing the implications.

On a more lighthearted note, Phunne adds that her mother was horrified to find her and her friends afterwards with various colors of powder caked under their noses, reflecting the myriad hues of sidewalk chalk.

Following the Sundance premiere screening, director Ahmir "Questlove" Thompson and producer Joseph Patel took to the stage to discuss the documentary and the ways they wanted to use it to discuss Black artistry and genius.

Related: Questlove on his Summer of Soul documentary and the major musician he wishes he could've included

"We can either be superhuman and a credit to our race," Questlove said, "or subhuman. You're either 'plus two' or 'negative two' just to get to that middle-ground zero space. That's the struggle where we're at, where it's like, 'Are we truly relatable? Are we truly equal? Do I see you as how I see myself?' ... This is not just the Sly Stone story. I always dreamed of having an intervention talk with my community. I guess this is how we did it."

Sly Lives! marks Thompson and Patel's second documentary feature, following their Oscar-winning 2021 film, Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised). Questlove went on to explain that part of the reason for the gap between the projects was his desire to dig into his own psyche, as the film raised questions about his successes and failures.

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"The circumstances that led to this moment right now is a lot of self-reflection," he told the Sundance audience. "Again, not even to insert myself into the story, but the insane amount of hours that I'd clock in doing therapy — there'd be times I'd come home like, 'I wonder if my bandmates feel that way about me. Am I a good communicator?' The answer was a resounding 'no.' So I had a lot of work to do on myself. So it's changed me as a human being, and that will change me as a collaborator and creator."

Sly Lives! hits Hulu on Feb. 13.

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