Learning that a rapper is from Lincoln, Nebraska, what do you expect them to sound like? What would they even rap about? It’s not exactly the cultural Mecca that is the Bronx, or the martialized bubble of an LA project, nor does it have the distinguishing Country twang of Atlanta This leaves an artist like Sleep Sinatra with the artistic license to color his music with Great Plains flavor, sending it through time and back with all of the history, stories, accomplishments and frustrations that founded these hip-hop mainstays.
Strange Fires, Sleep Sinatra’s new EP with Salt Lake City producer Heather Grey, is a brief reframing of the modern lower class experience through the oft overlooked eyes of history’s proletariats. Short-sighted infighting and shallow distractions keep our focus on consumption over action, and survival rather than solutions. Sleep raps like a mere vessel for this messaging, flow intentional and words heavy with generations of the vexed.
This isn’t Sleep’s first time writing with a historic lens either – it’s a key fact of his style going back to 2020’s Routes, reminiscent of the monumentality of Mach-Hommy, Al.Divino, Starker, who all filter hip-hop through older, even ancient global cultures.
The track “Museums in the Hood” frames hip-hop artists and Black accomplishment not only as history to be celebrated, but also as a mantle that he continues to carry in real time. Name dropping Future, Nas and others, Sleep pulls the rug out beneath you in the final verse, where he spotlights the millions more who are robbed of their potential to reach those heights: “Got stopped for walking while black and brown, a cautionary tale for street collegiates with no cap and gown”.
On a song like “Fangs”, with frequent August Fanon collaborator Stik Figa, Sleep approaches these issues from a motivated, solipsistic perspective (“Coronate the kings, put in work – more than they can dream, coordinate the team, score and take the ring… steppping away from everything that ain’t great for me”). He treats Strange Fires as a call to action, that we can only make change for ourselves through focus, and at large through organized initiatives. Don’t just peel back the veil to expose the tyrants – burn it and drag them back with us.
Heather Grey typically works with smoother artists like Chuuwee, Monday Night, and even Asher Roth, so for him to build such a Medieval, pastoral atmosphere that Sleep can actually find pockets in is a feat itself. These beats sound like they were pulled straight out the Duchy, in their natural state and hardly drummed up for a rapper – a testament to both artists.
Sleep Sinatra continues his pattern of short, sweet producer collabs, each with their own unique vibe. While I could dream up plenty of other potential collabs for him, Strange Fires leaves me equally hungry for more Heather Grey production matched to such dusty, conceptually minded MCs. Their work thus far is self-actualizing; not a glimpse behind the veil, but a revelation only identifiable by the scorched remains of time’s failures towards us.