Sly Stone’s Daughter Snorted Chalk as a Kid After Watching Dad Do Cocaine

Back when Sly Stone was in the throes of drug addiction, his cocaine use was obvious — even to his young daughter.

In the new documentary Sly Lives! (aka the Burden of Black Genius), which hits Hulu on Feb. 13, the legendary musician’s daughter Phunne Stone recalls a moment from her childhood in which she once snorted chalk in an attempt to mimic her dad.

Phunne, whom Stone shared with Sly and the Family Stone cofounder and trumpet player Cynthia Robinson, says in an on-camera interview that Stone, 81, was not the most present father, even though she believes her parents had real love (Robinson died in 2015 at age 69).

“I think that my dad is really actually shy, and I think drugs helped him be fearless,” she says. “My mom loved him more than any man. She never dated another man after my dad. But he wasn’t always around when I lived with my mom.”

Phunne was often the only child around, and she says she lived “in an adult world, to where I thought I was grown.”

One day, while playing house with friends, Stone stopped by, leaving behind a collection of razor blades that he’d used to cut lines of cocaine.

“I went and grabbed me one and my box of chalk. And I said, ‘We gon’ do what the grown folks do.’ So I got my chalk and I chopped up about 37 lines of chalk out there and got the Monopoly money, rolled it up. ‘Okay!’” Phunne recalls. “We were out there [snorts] about 19 lines. We sneezing and s—.”

At one point, an appalled Robinson came outside to scold her daughter.

“My mama came out and was like, ‘What are you doing?!’ I mean, it’s green and pink, ‘cause you know the chalk [is] different colors,” Phunne says in the doc. “And I’m telling mom, ‘Nothing!’ She beat the brakes off me.”

The musician goes on to explain that she only recently rekindled her relationship with her father — and their reunion was very emotional.

“He cried, I cried, everybody around us was crying,” she says. “And we was hugging and shaking and all that.”

Sly Lives!, directed by Questlove, focuses on the rise and fall of Sly and the Family Stone, from its electric frontman’s humble beginnings and superstardom to the drug addictions that ultimately derailed his career.

Stone — who has chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and has lost a large amount of his lung capacity — finally got clean in 2019, according to the Guardian.

“Even in those days I worked,” Stone told the outlet in 2023. “I didn’t like to be the kind of person who just drew the blinds and didn’t work. It was important to me that I was in a place where I could always create music. But, I might have stopped [doing drugs] sooner knowing what I know now.”

The documentary features archival interviews with Stone, plus new interviews with longtime band members and Stone’s children, including Phunne, daughter Novena Carmel and son Sylvester Stewart Jr.

“As a kid, hearing about him being arrested for drugs or whatever, I didn’t like it,” Sylvester says in the doc. “I always wanted him to be the person that I was always told he was when I was a baby… These last few years are the most normal times I’ve had with him.”

Sly Lives! premiered at the 2025 Sundance Film Festival earlier this year, and is now streaming.