Today we’d like to introduce you to Wesley Sweetapple.
Hi Wesley, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
An only child, I spent the early years of my life moving around with my parents. Unable to build lasting friendships, I rarely grew attached to others. Born in Orlando, Florida, but I lived in six different states before I was eight years old. Eventually, we moved to Paulding, Georgia, The constant solitude taught me to be independent by nature. Alone with my thoughts, I developed a rich imagination which inspired an interest in writing creative short stories with vivid imagery. This was my escape until I discovered something better; Music.
At the time, I was really struggling difficult home life. my mom struggled with substance abuse. there were fights most nights of the week and the police made regular appearances to keep tabs on domestic disputes. I grew up seeing my family struggle with dysfunction, rage, and anger. Music became a necessary expression of emotion.
Skateboarding as an early teenager, I was drawn to popular Punk bands like blink-182, idolizing drumming techniques of Travis Barker. I appreciated their ability to write catchy melodies and mainstream hits. Already into rock music my mom Was a fan of grunge and Introduced me to 90s alternative groups like Nirvana Alice In Chains and Pearl Jam. As I grew older tho, rap and hip-hop began to take over the Billboard charts. This is when artists like TI and Lil Wayne were blowing up on the scene. I liked their style but seeing the movie Notorious and then delving into all his music and 2pac as well made me fall in love with the golden age of hip-hop. Found there was space to talk about the struggle. Rap wasn’t only about parties, money and girls; it was about the hardships and pains of human existence. “Sweetapple Wes” Soon became an alias to match the new direction my music would take. At the same time, I felt the need to distinguish myself and become self-reliant, my dad wasn’t home much, and I knew I didn’t want to go to college after I graduated (2009), I wanted to0 make music, so I started selling weed when I was 16 and by the end of my high scho0l year, let’s just say Paulding County became too hot of a place for me to stay safe. So I took a leap of faith and moved to Atlanta to create a new life.
After a few years of playing with different bands, I realized that my true desire was to take creating hip-hop seriously. I had no knowledge of production or recording and didn’t know any beatmakers personally, so I never really got started how I wanted. For some reason, anytime I’d try to just write lyrics without any music, it just felt forced and didn’t flow how I knew I could.
2015 would change all of that though. A close friend of mine that I had lived with for the previous three years, also was a fellow bandmate, had been struggling with a heroin addiction. I knew he had issues with it before we met, but he had moved to Atlanta as well around the same time I did, after a six months rehab stay. He had the dreams and goals of making it in music so we hit it off right away. He would drink and smoke here and there but for years, he stayed clean while we were living together. Late 2014 he started struggling again tho, and not long after, lost his job, and was out of control. We got him help and his family got him into a rehab center again. 6 months later, he was released. He was a pretty lanky guy, slender, had long red hair, but he got out and was like IN shape. cut his hair, looked like a whole new person. I was hella proud. He wanted to focus on work and being in his daughter’s life primarily but still had the itch. to jam, which was great to me since our group was the only thing I had going at the time musically.
Sadly, not even a month later, he relapsed and was found dead in his home. I had never lost anyone that close to me before, it was a strange feeling. I got the call while I was at work, and hung up and went right back to work as if nothing happened. Idk my mind just didn’t process it. It wasn’t until a day or two later that I really broke down and felt the reality of what happened. that my best friend was gone forever. I felt like death was a presence for the next week or two like it was something physically there lurking behind me, waiting for its chance to take me as well. You hear tragic things like this that happen all the time but you never think it’s going to happen to you or someone that close to you until it does. You feel completely powerless against it. I was super confused, depressed, and lost for several weeks until I ran into a girl I knew from back in high school. We started talking and instantly just clicked romantically. She really helped me through the grieving process and not only that, really finding myself again. I was actually feeling happiness again. We liked a lot of the same music and she was super supportive toward my creative ambitions. We continued to talk every day and hang out for about two months. I was falling for her quickly. I started feeling like my friend left behind this gift for me. I had planned to ask her out officially at this incubus/deftones concert we went to, but we both got pretty inebriated that night, and she had to leave at a decent time the following morning. And for some reason, that was the last time I ever heard from her. Later that following day, she blocked me on everything, I know I didn’t do or say anything out of line. I can only conclude years later that I was probably moving too fast and she had recently just ended a serious relationship, but at the time that did not click with me. I was angry. I was sad. I was confused. I was now feeling myself slip into a place I wasn’t sure I was going to make it out of alive. I had JUST started finally healing from the loss of my best friend, so for this to happen so soon, I just gave up. For weeks if not months, I Indulged very heavily on alcohol, prescription pills, and whatever I could find to help numb any of this.
But one morning, I woke up, went to grab a bottle of whiskey like I had been doing, but I just couldn’t do it to myself anymore, the whole killing myself slowly. I had to do something tho, so I got some headphones put on a pair of running shoes and just ran. I just kept running and running and running, all while a J.cole playlist was on repeat. I ran for like 4 miles, which was crazy because I hadn’t exercised in quite some time. I felt a lot better but I couldn’t get this instrumental to one of J Coles songs out of my head, after a shower and some down time I just kept hearing it, so I decided to see if I can find just the instrumental version on YouTube, which I was able to pretty quickly. As soon as I hit play, words started flowing naturally, almost too naturally, I scrambled for a pen and paper, think I settled for the back of an envelope at the time. And within 10-15 minutes, I had a whole song written to it, and it was literally everything, style, flow, lyrically, that I’ve been wanting to accomplish since high school. I was ecstatic! I literally felt like my soul had been released from something for so long, like this huge wall of writer’s block that existed in my head for so many years finally just been demolished within 10 minutes. I couldn’t wait to show my friends and the world. But it wasn’t enough; I needed more. I finally felt like I can put down my story and my style and make it happen. The rest is history, but I feel like all of that was definitely the build-up and key moments of me becoming the artist I am today. I’ve only capitalized on that momentum and knowledge even tenfold more since, with me getting a laptop learning how to make beats learning how to mix, then finally saving up and getting a microphone and start recording my songs. I was wrong about what my friend left me, thinking it was love. I feel like this happened for me to live the dream for both of us. And I won’t stop till I do.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Balancing Music and Work and having a social life has been trial and error over time for me. I spent a lot of my early twenties partying and adventuring around the city instead of putting in work into my lifelong dream. I was stuck at the moment, not really having the financial support to get myself the things I needed to invest in my musical career, so I spent most of my time just partying and getting to know new people. Later in my twenties after losing one of my best friends to an overdose, I realized it was now or never, and went 100 percent into my passion, my dream; Being a successful/impactful artist/musician. If you didn’t somehow contribute to knowledge or inspiration for my music, I had nothing to do with you. I spent all my time educating myself, watching tutorials on youtube on how to produce/record/mix and master music, how to market my music, just everything I could. After a while, if found myself with only a small handful of friends that truly believed in me and inspired me every day. Others watched through a metaphorical glass window as I canceled social plans and stayed at home 24/7 working on my craft. To this day, it’s pretty much the same. I struggle with knowing I need to have balance in my life, it’s good to put your heart and soul in your craft, but if you don’t find some kind of balance and return to the energies of everyday normal life, socializing and maturing with your peers, you will definitely burnout and find your body forcing yourself to take a break.
While that has been an overall battle, I deal with not just pursuing music, but on a personal level, social anxiety has always been a shadow cast on me that is hard to escape. But I also want to speak on a different type of experience that I had somewhat recently, I released my first mixtape, titled Mostly 4 Millenialz Vol. 1 back in November 2020. I was brand new to making and marketing ads on my Facebook and Instagram to promote my music, but during an ad run for the lead single from this project, an A&R, who was working for a company called Wealth Nation, which was an umbrella company under Sony Music. She told me she really liked my song and wanted to have a conversation with me and the boss of the company if I was interested. I had looked into her page and the companies website as well just to get somewhat acquainted, but we talked. They really liked my music and basically told me they have the connections and means to get a meeting and potential deal signed with Sony. But we had to build and promote my art/brand to a certain point (analytics-wise) to even land a meeting. Of course, I understood this as I was still new on the scene. But, what started as something that was going to cost me around 1000 a month to promote on certain sites turned into a whole strategy to get me a deal as quickly as possible, I definitely let things get out of hand and $30-$40,000 later in six months, realized that it wasn’t about me as an artist. It was about pocketing as much money of mine as they could. It really sucks because the people I worked with on my team were actually dope and we’re talented at managing/directing. Unfortunately, the boss was more concerned with money over creating any kind of relationship with me.
I stopped working with the team last summer and not only was exhausted financially, I also felt like I had lost all momentum going forward with music.
After a few weeks of crippling, depression and random small panic attacks, I started feeling creative again and felt like I had a whole plethora of new subject matter to write and make music to. Right when I started working with wealth nation at the end of 2020, my lease was up on the house I was renting at the time and I decided I wanted to live by myself moving forward I was thinking things were going to work out better financially with the music, but I got a loft and as soon as I move in, I start realizing how much the company is screwing me and not only that the people who lived in my building I guess didn’t like me from the start even though I never did anything disrespectful, I usually keep to myself, I may have 2-3 friends over here and there but I’m not throwing parties all night especially knowing I live right next to people now. Anytime I would play music even at a normal level I would get a knock on my door from the Buildings security or a few times from APD themselves. This neighbor would just completely exaggerate and make up insane things like me, leaving threatening notes on her door or blasting music randomly just to upset her, which never happened lol. I want the least amount of attention like that brought on to me as possible. So not only did I lose my team I was working with, now I needed to find a new place to live before I get arrested for something I never did just because I’m trying to create some music to keep my sanity. Yea that’s basically how I felt at the time.
To wrap up this novel, lol, toward the end of the year last year, I was able to get back on my feet financially, broke my lease with the loft, I got a house in East Atlanta village that’s tucked away from anyone, so I’m free to record and create anytime I like without any repercussions. My closest friends have now started helping me almost full-time with anything I need like submitting my music to influencers or creating visuals, etc. I’m really excited now for the future; I think in the long run, it was a good experience to work with that previous team, but building my own company with my friends I trust at least to an extent to where we could partner with a label without having to get scammed by some middle man along the way will create a long-lasting career for myself and friends. (here’s to hoping)
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I’m a hip-hop artist/musician/creative. I create pieces of music, usually using my MK3 sampler and play drums/guitar/bass, in the comfort of my own home studio I’ve been slowly building over the past few years. After I create a bunch of fresh new sounds, usually low-fi hip hop mixed with some RnB and trap elements, ill carefully piece together all the ones that flow together like a story or movie then begin writing lyrics to them. I like to rap with an interesting flow and follow it up with catchy melodic hooks. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting a lot of like-minded creative individuals in the city and others from networking on social media. I can say I’m proud to have a small. But loyal following, hitting over 100k Spotify streams on 2020’s summer hit “Rob de Niro” and have already garnered 20k streams on my latest single ‘midnight melodies” – title track to my new project coming this fall. I’ve just started putting together a short visual podcast called “midnight rollup” where me and my co-producer/good friend just talk about music, crazy stories from our hometown and everything in between. There aren’t a lot of artists who literally do it all as far as the creation process goes, but I literally do it ALL, from producing to mixing to marketing promoting. Keeping my mysterious/spacey vibing with it all.
What’s next?
I’m about to release a project I’ve been working on this year titled “midnight melodies” – an 8-track cohesive album that was inspired by an accumulated amount of time spent alone with my thoughts but personally felt much more refined and matured. I’ve also just started putting together a short visual podcast that I plan on posting short content on TikTok/Youtube, etc. called “midnight rollup” where me and my co-producer/good friend just talk about music crazy stories from our hometown and everything in between while we roll one up and smoke, then it ends.
Already have my next project, “Mostly 4 Millenialz Vol. 2” completely produced and written, just need to record the vocals. I really want to make this project a lot more upbeat and light and fun since midnight melodies was representing a darker-heavier more mysterious yet refined and mature thoughts. I have the plan to organize a scavenger hunt with the release of the project. I’m not solid 100 percent yet but I wanna create a visual for each song on the tape, Some of them are going to be full music videos, some are going to just be short visualizers like trailers for a movie. Others will have lyric videos. But I wanna incorporate the release of a visual/ a piece of art from a local artist/ and a gift card or something with a local business and coordinate it with the release of each song release and scavenger hunt, so stay tuned for that, be going on most of 2023. I really just wanna build my fanbase and brand more and continue working with those I can trust, and if it makes sense potentially partner with a major label, but freedom is most important to me.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sweetapplewes/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sweetapplewes
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9E0PSvvg4cvYzfD_VDK35g
- SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/sweetapplewes
- Other: https://open.spotify.com/artist/5VrCMIA24mU9tNM2MbF95m?si=_77C1KcFQVmoSPvGd26Xwg
Image Credits
Images by: Nick Lozoya Erin Parcells Cap2Red Studios
