Big Sleepover

Calling an album by Dungeon Family forefathers Big Boi and Sleepy Brown Big Sleepover seems like kind of a no-brainer, but if you’re at all familiar with the ways of the mighty DF, you’ll understand that there’s a message in just about everything. “It's a double meaning,” Big Boi explained to Zane Lowe ahead of the album’s release. “Big Sleepover, we here to wake people up: The ‘big sleep’ is over. It's about awareness.”

As one half of Outkast and one of the Dungeon Family’s most beloved writers and producers, respectively, if Big or Sleepy Brown were ever short on presence, it was by choice, the two having long ago cemented their impact in the game. In 2021, however, they’re able to release the endlessly funky, trend-eschewing Dirty South anthems they’ve always enjoyed making, and do so only when they feel like it. “All we really wanted to do was prove ourselves and show that Atlanta, Georgia, is a place of music and love and funk,” Sleepy says. “So for me, I'm so happy to be a part of that.”

The charm of Sleepy's modesty aside, Big Sleepover is inarguably one of the funkiest and most self-assured collections of grown-man rap in recent memory. Whether the two are ruminating on the role sex plays in their lives (“Animalz”), talking about the effect their presences continue to have on women (“Can’t Sleep,” “Baller”), or delivering the secret to maintaining peace of mind (“Sucka Free”), Big and Sleepy can only be themselves on record, proud elder statesmen with more than enough sauce to spare. Every track on Big Sleepover is a testament to how comfortable the OGs are in their own skin, and if you can’t hear it in the stories, let Sleepy tell you outright on “The Big Sleep Is Over”: “We have nothing else to prove.”