Flat Shoals Rd. is about as East as East Atlanta gets. There are more than a few families struggling to make ends meet on this urban precipice, and in one family of five, a kid got a little lost in street life when he was far too young. He faced fights and academic expulsion, multiple arrests, narrowly surviving shootings—but what comes after this is a story all its own. Trevin Bryan Roberson-Cunningham, who now goes by the stage name Sleepy, persevered through the hard life long enough to find a new way to live. In the art of his lyrics, something fresh grows.
From the Street to the Studio
Sleepy remembers hearing his grandma listening to musicians like Luther Vandross and Teddy Pendergrass, but his greatest love was for MTV rappers like Outkast, a favorite inspiration. He still has memories of childhood, writing songs as early as the age of nine, or rapping the periodic table for a school project, but the violence of the street changed him. He began to pour something else into his music, something raw, almost too real.
“Only the strong survive,” is something of a personal credo for Sleepy, right next to “Giving up is the only way to quit,” and “Stick to the plan.” When he was first getting noticed and making his way into the music industry, he faced all the same unfamiliarity, the need to find his way and push forward against setbacks and criticisms. But he’d been tested enough in life, so he was resilient, and this resilience paid off.
Sleepy’s collab with Crispy, “Bon Appetit,” hit #20 on the iTunes Top 100 charts and has amassed over a million Spotify streams, and “Ain’t Cut” made it to #7 on the iTunes Africa Top 100 list, crushing numbers for an artist so early in his career.
He might call himself Sleepy, but he sees himself bringing energy, variety, and passion into a genre that he thinks has gotten stale. “We need a huge change,” he says. “I’m a bring the life back to parties, and bring love back to music.”
“You Gotta Build Your Own Door One Day.”
Sleepy’s most recent single, “One Day at a Time,” is a collaboration with producer Max Harmon, and the lyrics highlight the resilience that has become Sleepy’s brand. He’s an artist with ambition. He has big rap dreams of multi-platinum albums and world tours, but he also imagines a studio built to help the kind of young artist that he used to be.
Sleepy remembers coming off the streets, trying to make sense of a competitive, ruthless music industry, and he wants to give young talents a place to hone their skills and learn what makes the industry move.
First as a resilient young man who refused to be crushed by the world, and now also as an artist ready to show off his talent, Sleepy is poised for big moves. The first move belongs to fans of rap and street sounds, though, who can find his music online and see what this talented Atlanta soul can create. Stream his music and hear for yourself.
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