Detroit musician Sixto Rodriguez recorded two albums in the early 1970s, sold almost nothing, and vanished into construction work, never knowing that a bootleg copy of "Cold Fact" had turned him into a phenomenon in apartheid-era South Africa, where fans traded rumors that he had set himself on fire on stage. The film follows two of those fans, record store owner Stephen Segerman and journalist Craig Bartholomew-Strydom, as they trace royalty statements and liner-note clues through Detroit trying to find out how their idol actually died. Interviews with Rodriguez's daughters, his old producers, and Detroit neighbors fill in a life spent doing manual labor within blocks of where his records were recorded. The investigation ends with a discovery neither expects, and the film closes with archival concert footage of Rodriguez walking onstage in Cape Town to thousands of South Africans who have waited decades to see him. It is a quiet story about fame arriving forty years late and a hundred degrees off course.