Little Richard Doc Explores His Tortured Sexuality and the X-Rated Origins of ‘Tutti Frutti’

Streaming has ushered in a so-called golden age of music documentaries, foregrounding artists as legendary as the Beatles and as nascent as Billie Eilish. With the proliferation of any product, especially one with as many constraints as a non-fiction film, viewers have learned to anticipate certain beats and crowd-pleasing moments in these films. The new rockumentary Little Richard: I Am Everything is no exception, as it sets out—in entirely by-the-book fashion—to salute the ever-confounding “Architect of Rock ‘n’ Roll.”

Directed by Lisa Cortés and co-produced by Dee Rees, the film at least attempts a unique mission, despite its conventional and chronological storytelling method. Like many Black and queer artists who shaped the rock ’n’ roll landscape in the 1950s and ’60s, Little Richard (whose real name was Richard Penniman) has not enjoyed the same visibility or deification as the many white acts he inspired—most notably English rock bands like the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, the latter of whom turned his signature 1955 song “Tutti Frutti” into a global hit. In that way, the doc is an attempt to give one of rock ’n’ roll’s founding fathers—who died from bone cancer in 2020—his flowers. At once, it denounces an industry that wasn’t prepared to accept him while revealing a man who could never fully come to terms with himself.

One of the most fascinating parts of the doc is its exploration of Black Christianity. The role of the Black church is crucial in telling Little Richard’s story and the contradictions he embodied as a queer man who would go on to renounce his sexuality several times throughout his career. Like many legendary Black artists, he mastered his frenetic singing style as a choir boy before navigating the so-called “chitlin’ circuit” and even drag clubs. The Georgia native, whose father was a deacon, also learned his thunderous piano-playing in church.

Read more at The Daily Beast.