From KCRW Santa Monica and KCRW.com, it's The Treatment.

I'm Elvis Mitchell. Welcome to The Treatment. These days, Amir Thompson, better known as

Questlove of the Roots, is now recognized for his

film projects as his music. He won an Oscar for directing the documentary Summer of Soul. His newest

project for Hulu is Sly Lives, aka The Burden of Black Genius, about the lives of the immensely

talented and troubled musician

Sly Stone. He joined me at this year's Sundance Film Festival and this is that conversation.

Please help me welcome Questlove, musician and more importantly, Academy winning filmmaker his new film is

Sly lives and let me ask you a question you asked so many people in the film

what do you think black genius is I think the desired unspoken answer, uh, is the ability to survive not only being a creative,

but also literally survive, like survive, uh, in whatever circumstance that you're in,

because a lot of us go from fight or flight to rags to riches.

But it's also surviving and like getting outside of your head.

You know, a lot of guilt is felt when you have success.

When you're black, you can't take everyone with you.

So I guess the shortest way to say it is

code switching, like the ability to code switch to adapt to whatever environment that you're in,

which I think for us is more, our success is almost seen in historical terms, know like when I achieve something I'm not

thinking of just like oh well I did that like I'm thinking in terms of history like okay I did my

people proud like put one on the board for our achievements which I mean's cool, but it's also a pressure behind that.

I mean, but you're like a second generation of music, too. So, I mean, you actually have kind of a

tradition. Yeah, yeah, technically at this stage in life, I should be, or at least feel free

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