Sleepy Hallow’s first album since he came home from prison arrived today, November 13, and he keeps most of its 23 songs to himself. Six carry a guest. Five are Loe Shimmy, Kyle Richh, DDG, ffawty and Annalise Azadian, and the sixth is Davido, who sings the middle of “Sad Face.”
The date gives it a nice symmetry. Six years ago today, Davido put out A Better Time, the album where the Americans came to him: Nicki Minaj on “Holy Ground,” Lil Baby on “So Crazy,” Nas on “Birthday Cake,” Chris Brown and Young Thug on “Shopping Spree.” On STILL SLEEP ?? he is the one who travelled.
Sleepy Hallow, born in Jamaica and raised in Flatbush, came up in Brooklyn drill beside his Winners Circle partner Sheff G. “2055” from his 2021 album Still Sleep? is four times Platinum, “Deep End Freestyle” with Fousheé went Platinum, and the new record is that album’s sequel, the first full-length he has made since his release this summer.
“Sad Face” opens on a producer tag, “Great John on the beat,” the name Apple Music’s notes give as Sleepy’s longtime go-to, and a plucked acoustic guitar loop sits over sliding 808s and quick drill hi-hats, with chopped R&B vocals tucked behind. The kicks land off the beat enough for an Afropop flow to settle in. Sleepy takes the first verse and a hook that keeps asking, “Can I get a hold of you my darling?” Then Davido gets 34 seconds. He sings in English and Pidgin about a girl in his back seat and a Bugatti on the road, and he rides a shimmy-shimmy chant to the end of his run before the hook comes back twice and the guitar plays the song out.
The official lyric video on Sleepy’s channel struggles with him: when Davido sings “I tell her say we dey active,” the screen spells it “we there active.”
He is one of the song’s four listed writers, as David Adeleke.
It is his second guest spot on an American album in two weeks. On October 30, Kirk Franklin’s I Am What I Am carried Davido praying in Pidgin and Yoruba on “Hope In You,” which has since entered Billboard’s Hot Gospel Songs chart at No. 6. Brooklyn drill is a long way from a gospel album, but a rapper’s record is familiar ground for him. He was here in 2018, when he took a verse on “Swing,” the Normani-assisted cut on Quavo’s first solo album.
Listen to “Sad Face” on Apple Music and Deezer.