From the Black queer origins of rock n’ roll to the whitewashed canon of American pop music, this explosive documentary reveals the true innovator—the originator—Richard Penniman. Through a wealth of archive and performance that brings us into Richard’s complicated inner world, the film unspools the icon’s life story with all its switchbacks and contradictions, careening between God, sex and rock ‘n’ roll. In interviews with family, musicians, and cutting-edge Black and queer scholars, the film reveals how Little Richard created an art form for ultimate self-expression. The world tried to put him in a box, but Little Richard was unabashedly everything.
