Producer/singer/songwriter Patrick “Sleepy” Brown wasn’t just inspired by yesteryear funk, the brother grew-up in the thick of it. As a boy, he traveled to gigs with his music playing daddy and Brick founder Jimmy Brown. When the Atlanta-based group released their monster debut Good High, their single “Dazz” made them urban dance floor darlings. Combining disco and jazz into sonic depth, Brick competed musically with big city boys Kool & the Gang and Mandrill; “Dazz,” with its deep groove and wicked flute solo, was an instant success.


Savoring the black stardust of the soul luminaries, Sleepy often stood in the shadows of backstage watching Cameo, Con Funk Shun, Switch and Brick throwing down as the audience worked themselves into funk frenzy.“Just watching those guys walk on stage and turn it out was exciting,” Brown told me in 2004 as we sat in the lounge area of New York City radio station Hot-97. “Seeing my father up there was incredible. I knew then what I wanted to do.” Although Pop’s Brown brought his boy a set of drums, it still took a few years for Patrick to start taking music seriously.


“I guess I was about 18 when I realized if I wanted to be good, I had to start putting in the work.” Befriending fellow music enthusiasts Rico Wade and Ray Murray, whose mackadelic tastes was in-line with his own blaxploitation aesthetics and superfly sensibility, the trio set-out to develop a sound that might separate them from others. Still, Brown realized, if he was going to be a super cool character like Goldie, Willie Dynamite or a model from a Flagg Bros advertisement, he needed a better name than Patrick. “Back in the 80s, I was a major Big Daddy Kane fan,” he recalled. “I thought he was the coolest nigga on the planet, but he always looked sleepy to me. I thought, what could be cooler than me calling myself Sleepy. According to Rico, I just walked into the house one day and said, ‘Just call me Sleepy.’ That’s a gangster name like Bumpy Johnson.”


After taking the boys over to his dad’s studio, they began grinding, initially making tracks for their group Uboys. Playing their demos for singer/TLC manager Perri “Pebbles” Reid (aka Mrs.LA Reid), she advised them to dump the group concept and stick with production. “We produced a rap duo for Pebble’s label called Parental Advisory (P.A.), but when that didn’t jump-off, we met Outkast and started working with them.”
Invited to submit a track for the LaFace Records Christmas album in 1993, the newly christened Organized Noize(Sleepy, Rico and Ray) crew contributed the Outkast song “Players Ball,” a track that could’ve been a theme song to more than a few flicks back in the day.


Production wise, the music was as inspired by the seventies soul icons Curtis Mayfield, Isaac Hayes and Willie Hutch as well as by the “in the lab” flare of Marley Marl, Dr. Dre and DJ Quik. “During that time, we all stayed in the same house and didn’t do nothing except make beats,” Sleepy remembered. “We stayed up all night, smoked all day, went to the Waffle House and go right back to work. We were so tight and together back then.” Coming at a time when pimp/player role-play thang had brothers watching The Mack as though it was a self-help video, “Players Ball” was a smash; five months later Outkast’s debut Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik was released to much fanfare.


Serving as the perfect calling card, Organized Noize continued to explore the depths of soul and hip-hop on various productions including TLC (“waterfalls”), Joi (Dandelion Dust”), Goodie Mob (“Dirty South”), Cool Breeze (“Watch for the Hook”) and a gang of other ATL artists who formed under the Dungeon Family banner. With a sound that was as soulful as chiltings with champagne sauce and cheese grits on the side, Organized Noize became a major factor inthe ATL sound that included LA and Babyface, Daryl Simmons, Dallas Austin and Jermaine Dupri. “Our main thing was we just wanted to give Atlanta a voice,” Sleepy said. “We came up at a time when nobody wanted to hear anything from the south, and we wanted to be a musical force.”


However, for all his success behind the mixing boards, Sleepy’s dream was to be in the studio leading a band of soulful renegades into a retro-futuristic rebellion against radio, critics and popular musical tastes of people shaking their booties to whatever Puffy’s Jiggy Hit Factory produced that week. “Being a producer was cool, but I wanted to be upfront,” Sleepy explained. “I had seen my dad do it and I wanted to do it too. We tried it first with Society of Soul(consisting of the Organized trio and vocalists Esperanza and Big Rube), but that didn’t work out.” Signed to LaFace, Society of Soul released their only record Brainchild in 1995. While it was a powerful album, it was a still a major label flop at a time when few got second chances.


Three years later, Brown conceived a more indie band Sleepy’s Theme featuring keyboardist/ singer Eddie Stokes, drummer Victor Rico Cortez, guitarist Bill Odum, vocalist Keisha Jackson and the late Pimp C, who produced one track (“Simply Beautiful”) and co-produced “Falling in Love” and “Can’t Let Go.” and. The group’s official press release, referred to them as “one of the tightest, greasiest, yet sophisticated bands in the land.” In addition to providing production, Brown sang in falsetto that was as sweet, thick and chocolaty as a glass of Bosco without the milk.


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