It’s hard to believe by looking at him today that Leo Orlando Napier, only seven months ago, in August of 2023, was about to be pronounced dead on the operating table of a Mallorquin hospital. He had been struck by a crippling heart infection which, unbeknownst to him, had been silently and steadily corroding his aorta for months. As each critical second ticked by, with no vital signs visible on the monitors, a surgeon waited patiently to call the time of death. At this moment, deep in a Dali-esque, DMT-saturated coma, Leo walked a tightrope, a thin strand of reality, oblivion on either side. Leo was performing for his life, and amazingly, he was given a second chance.

Leo Orlando Napier is a California-born soul singer, songwriter, and pianist with formidable talents and boyish good looks that belie his 30-odd years. He has a rambunctious nature and a tumultuous past, and he fully expects to charm music lovers of all palettes and persuasions with what he considers, and not without a healthy dose of irony in his voice, his "first, true, honest-to-goodness, independent solo record, unpolished to perfection, and influenced only by the music I love."

Leo’s 'Philly Gritz EP,' produced by his closest friend and most trusted musical collaborator, Adam 'Stehreo' Stehr, is saturated with the grit, grime, and legendary soul/R&B influence of Philadelphia. Stehreo Records' close proximity to Kensington, the infamous open-air drug market and tragically open secret that epitomizes the 21st-century American opioid epidemic, makes its presence felt through Leo’s lyrics in the fifth and final track on the EP. 'Get Back Up,' a paradoxically upbeat, introspective, Funk/Soul throwback, is as flippant as it is dark.

Leo’s casually indifferent delivery of what some might consider heavy personal baggage allows the listener a glimpse into how Leo, the artist, with the help of his pen, his microphone, and with a hint of levity, might help strengthen his resolve during his more vulnerable moments.

“I was predicting my own downfall when I wrote 'Get Back Up.' Then I went about implementing it. Eventually, I did get back up, but it hasn't been easy. Glad I wrote that chorus with a happy ending.,” Leo comments.

Born to British immigrants and raised in a free-minded if somewhat fractured household, Leo was given a long leash and, more often than not, left to his own devices, which suited his independent nature. He spent a lot of his early youth on the streets of Hollywood (Cali), London (UK), and eventually Santa Barbara, California. Leo was naturally athletic with a fiery competitive streak and was heavily influenced by sports and the popular culture of the time. Although he was always drawn to music, it wasn’t music that dominated the spirit of his youth. Highly energetic and difficult to pin down, Leo was in his element when riding his skateboard through city streets, sparring at boxing clubs, hunting for pick-up basketball and football games, fully committed to anything that focused his mind and kept his dopamine receptors charged. Though the music was always there, it didn't become his true love until his late teens, when he needed it most.

Leo found his affinity for music through the encouragement of his father, Hugo Napier, a former NYC Yellow Cab driver, a soap opera actor, tenor saxophonist, and hard-working jack-of-all-trades who Leo credits with doing all he could to hold their small, ever-shifting family unit together throughout the years.

“I wouldn’t be singing, performing, or writing music if it weren’t for my father. He saw that I was rudderless and adrift as a teenager, headed for prison or worse. So he led me toward music by starting a little band of his own and inviting me to play with them. A week into rehearsals, I’d already written my first song, swiped the microphone from my dad, sat behind the piano, and I was off to the races. I had found my calling and I never looked back.”

So began Leo’s ‘college’ years, cutting his teeth as a working musician, learning to score gigs, writing songs, composing charts for his band, and voraciously consuming, digesting, and regurgitating the sounds of his musical heroes. Leo listened to everything with a hint of soul, however, Ray Charles was far and away his number-one musical influence.

“I always saw Ray as the greatest of all time - the fountain of wisdom when it came to soul & R&B - a human gumbo of pain, pathos, humor, and freakish talent. To me, his was the highest musical standard one could reach for, bar none… except for maybe Aretha. I knew I could never match that talent, but reaching for it would keep me improving and evolving for as long as I could hold an audience.”

Leo’s first significant exposure came a few years into his singing career when he was cast on the brand new, still unknown, first season of what would become the nationally syndicated hit TV show, The Voice. The producers of the show had reached out to Leo after seeing a video he’d uploaded to YouTube, where Leo was strumming an acoustic guitar and singing one of his original songs, 'Release It When I Sing.' After making it through all of the initial casting cuts, the show’s producers removed him from the lineup, right before his first televised ‘blind audition’ performance. They promised to call him back for season two, which to Leo’s surprise, they did, and by then, the show was a hit! Leo recalls that experience.

“I spent three months in a hotel, paid for by NBC, surrounded by some of the best singers in America, almost all of them completely unknown. I met hundreds of artists during the pre-qualification stages of seasons 1 and 2 of The Voice. All of us soul-oriented guys (and gals) would congregate around the piano - often it was me playing the keys. We would be trading vocal licks, off-the-cuff lyrics, and melodies, seeking an elusive note to round out a 6-part harmony… we were like musical vampires feeding off each other’s talent and passion. I was still a rookie, only three years into my singing career, but I learned that I could hold my own with these powerhouse vocalists. That was immensely validating. The TV performances were what they were - kind of artificial and a bit tense. But the most memorable musical performances happened at the artists’ hotel.”

Leo had two stellar, televised performances on The Voice, Season 2, before being cut by his ‘team leader,’ Adam Levine after a rousing duet performance of The Commodores’, 'Easy'. Leo admits that he was never able to find a rapport with the elusive and often awkward Levine. However, the opposite was true with the other team leaders, like Cee-Lo Green and some of the celebrity mentors on the show. He found an easy kinship with prolific soul singer and songwriter, Robin Thicke, whose easy charisma and kind words still resonate with Leo to this day.

Leo eventually grew tired of SoCal’s easy, breezy, freeway lifestyle, cashing in his chips, selling his car, and trading it all in for an NYC subway system transit card. He found himself a cheap, broom closet apartment in East Harlem and promptly went to work building a network.

It was in New York that the pieces of the puzzle began fitting together. He found himself thrust into the newly burgeoning EDM scene in 2014, after meeting DJ Gramatik in Brooklyn, where they cut, produced, and mixed their first collaboration, 'Faraway,' in a few short hours. This song was then released on Gramatik’s album, 'Age of Reason.' Leo’s voice and songwriting were finally in the spotlight.

An electro-funk collaboration with DJ GRiZ, 'A Fine Way To Die,' came soon after, now having garnered well over ten million spins on Spotify. This was followed up with some of Leo’s darkest and most imposing lyrical compositions, 'Native Son,' and then 'Native Son - The Prequel' for Gramatik, which featured Raekwon of Wu-Tang fame. This two-part epic narrative tale has since been streamed several million times and that release culminated in a spectacular live performance at Coachella, with Leo, Raekwon, and Gramatik on the Sahara stage, performing for an audience of 40,000. Another chart-topping dance collaboration with GRiZ came out in 2017, along with Leo’s 'Before I Go Away.'

There were many more ‘featured’ collaborations, songs written by Leo Napier and produced by the new, electronic rock stars of the 21st century, who were at the top of their game and drawing massive crowds. Leo was content to be a featured artist for the time being. He knew his day would come, but what he would have to go through to get there was something he could only predict through his strangely precognitive lyrics.

Leo is currently hard at work, preparing the final track for the 'Philly Gritz EP,' which will be released on April 30th, 2024. He has more EDM collaborations coming down the pike in 2024, but more importantly, Leo is opening his 18-year-old archive of original songs, which will be mixed, mastered, and released consistently as he composes new material. This new metamorphosis stays true to all the promises he made to himself during his long convalescence after the near-death experience in August of 2023.

He would slow down, learn to take his time, and work smart. He would abstain from all chemical distractions, dumping out the pills and powders that seemed to find their way into the lining of his fedora by the end of every live performance. He would never again be hindered by self-doubt and procrastination when it came to releasing his music. Instead, he would work completely independently, free of commercial influence, and instead of shunning them, he would embrace and utilize all the tools the 21st century's digital age has put at our disposal. The 'Philly Gritz EP' will become the first of many releases, heralding the rebirth of the man and his music. A campaign that all who know him believe beyond a shadow of a doubt will place Leo Napier’s musicality, songwriting, lyricism, vocal dynamism, and showmanship right up there with the marquee names of the 21st century's musical artists.

The 'Philly Gritz EP,' along with the songwriter’s archive, is a comprehensive, vivid reflection of Leo Orlando Napier, the boy, the man, the musician, and his legend. It spans the genres of classic soul, funk, gospel, R&B, hip-hop, electronic, and pop, but that miscellany doesn’t throw off his listeners. The one constant is his voice, his lyrical vivacity, sense of humor, and rich, smoky tone that has only become stronger and more soul-stirring through adversity. There has never been a better time to discover Leo Napier. He is just hitting his stride.

“One of the first things that hit me upon regaining consciousness a few days after the operation was that, had I died, I would have taken all of my unheard music to the grave with me. I’ve dedicated most of my life to this craft and these songs. They're the fragments that comprise the mosaic that is my identity, my soul. From now on, every song I’ve written is going back to the people I wrote them for. These songs are for you, as much as they are for me. My second life began after my heart stopped and restarted on August 18th, 2023. My career begins in earnest on April 30th, 2024, with the release of the 'Philly Gritz EP.'”