We recently connected with Sonny Apollo and have shared our conversation below.
Sonny, appreciate you joining us today. What do you think it takes to be successful?
I think what it takes to be successful is first you have to define what success means to you and what success looks like to you. For me, I define success as being able to pursue my life and live my life on my terms daily with passion and with enthusiasm. I define success as being able to wake up daily and go to sleep nightly knowing that the time I spent in between was spent as a creative entity… that the time I spent in between would be utilized pursuing and/or doing what I wanted to do and what I am passionate and enthusiastic about doing. When I was younger, I always wanted to be involved with music and entertainment. I always wanted to be in the music industry and the entertainment industry. I always wanted people to feel good and/or better through my work. I am now in the music industry and entertainment industry and, through the ups and downs, I would not change my course. I am happier than if I were not in the music and entertainment industry. Waking up is a success! Good health is a success! Having your basic needs covered is a success! Seeing Sonny Apollo live is a success! Ha. Again, what’s your definition of success?
Sonny, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My name is Sonny Apollo.
I am a performing artist, songwriting, producing, acting, dancing, citizen of the world!
My business is humanity! My business is equality! My business is providing ear candy and safe spaces, sometimes at the same time! My business is my mission statement: to make others feel the way I felt when I first heard Stevie Wonder at age 9. I primarily execute my mission through music, but I have also done it through songwriting (for and with others), through music production (for and with others), through nightlife production, through dance, through acting, through health and wellness, through existing.
I am most proud to still be here on planet earth producing work and being involved in work that I am passionate and enthusiastic about… and to live a life that I am passionate and enthusiastic about.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The most rewarding aspect of being an artist and a creative is knowing that I get to be an artist and creative every single day of my life. To know that I am living what was once a dream I had as a child and a goal, is now a reality. To know that I am living out my mission statement daily of making people feel how I first felt when I heard Stevie Wonder for the first time is not only rewarding, but also a blessing. To know that I make a living as an artist and creative is rewarding. To still be inspired is rewarding. To still have passion and drive is rewarding. To still have enthusiasm is rewarding. To still be here and stake claim as an artist and creative is rewarding.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
Days after the Inauguration of Donald Trump and what his presidency has incited, I am still here, ha. LFG.
My life so far has been one of resilience. Since birth. I don’t know that I can settle on one story, succinctly, without merging into another story. Sorry! My blackness is a daily test of my resilience. My being a visibly and distinctly black, a cisgender male, and believing in myself wholly daily and showing up for myself daily and wholly is a daily test of my resilience. How I express my blackness is a daily test of my resilience. My queerness…my sexuality…how I express my gender is a daily test of my resilience. My life has almost been a bit of protest to these factors and then some that test my resilience. My life is a daily illustration of my resilience. Being born with a debilitating lung related disease (asthma) that required me to be on a nebulizer for months (YEARS, doll! Haha. But god) is a story. I adapted, and I am still here. The many messages the pastor from my childhood church communicated behind his pulpit demonizing lgbtq people to hell, cloaking it behind a message of “god still loves you” serve as challenges to my resilience. I heard that throughout my childhood, and as recently as a 2023 visit to the church I grew up at… I’m still here, ha. Thank god. Because I am supposed to be. Check mate. A good portion of my experiences during my childhood serve as a story of my resilience. Being bullied by randoms in the world and/or being bullied by relatives. Being and/or feeling unprotected. Being told as a child that I am just like my father, or that I am just like one of my uncles (ya know, looking back, sometimes it felt like … like almost, like I was being cursed)? Ha. I’ve worked that out. I am still here. Resilience. I have transmuted each of those experiences and I have carried on. What about, as a byproduct of how you feel about my mother, is how you treat me or how you have determined my worth? What about having to experience the single black mother’s plight second hand? It’s resilience. There are experiences relating to times seeing how my family and/or strangers and/or business partners would react to others who were lgbtq but “making” space for me. Yes, I have made space from people in each category. Seeing how masculine presenting black queer men are received, but not those who present as more femme, and not those who maybe are in the middle? (shout outs to my fellow Butch Queens, lbvs). Resilience. The feeling of “tolerance” but not acceptance? Resilience. Resilience is the name of the game, ha. Then, there is being in the music industry and the entertainment industry with the constant pivots that we as (black and/or queer) artists have to go through? I could break down each experience that was a test of my resilience in the industry, but I don’t want to, I am still here. I am supposed to be. I don’t want a pity party at all behind any of those examples. Don’t cry for me Argentina, ha. The best exercise of resilience is continued success.
It’s January 2025 and wildfires rage in LA, a place I’ve called home for about 6 years now. What do you do when your homeland is burning? When you are either on lockdown, or evacuation, or somewhere in the middle? You hear from the person you’re dating, you hear from your aunt, and you hear from your direct community, but what happens when you’re reminded of your mortality in that moment or, when you’re reminded of a past version of your life that could be your present version again (houselessness and all that comes with it)? You tap into that resilience that has carried you to the point you’re at now in life. You tap in. Or you loop Mariah Carey’s “Fly Like a Bird” and have a moment of pause. For me, I did all of that, then I got active. With that, let me switch my focus for a moment to highlight the resilience of the community of LA during this unnatural natural disaster that occurred in early January to us. We as a community came together and showed up for each other in ways that we have been socialized and politicized to believe is fading away in the year of 2025 and beyond. I want to highlight and thank those from different places and countries. Thank you! I live in a world of resilience. This LA LA community of dreamers, of believers… of fighters who daily show their resilience. I live in a world of resilience beyond LA LA. A world of humanoids going through a series of tests of their resilience…
In closing, I want to express my story of my resilience through my work. Through my presence. Through my current existence. For those who come to me and experience me, just know that I am a humanoid experiencing life just like you. I have not been and I will not be without tests of my resilience just like you. Whatever the optics of me look like from then to now to the future then doesn’t matter… In each, what you see is an outcome of my [continued] exercise of my resilience.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.linktr.ee/sonnyapollo
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sonnyapollox
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sonnyapollonow
- Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/sonnyapollo
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/sonnyapollonow
- Other: My new single MORE, PT. 1:https://greentea.lnk.to/MOREPT1
Image Credits
Adán Ramirez