In just a few years, Sean McGee’s life has gone from the gutter to the penthouse.
The 20-year-old McGee’s song, “My Story,” has been downloaded more than 12 million times on MySpace. A video of the song on YouTube has collected more than 500,000 hits.
These days, he finds himself jetting off to Florida to do performances and working with some of the bigger names in the industry on his yet-to-be-released first album.
McGee,who dropped out of Sandusky High School after his junior year, said it took him just 20 minutes to write “My Story.”
his song "My Story" got more than 10,000 hits on You Tube and 12 million on mypace web sites.
After writing “My Story” sometime in 2007 McGee phoned his friend and local rapper/producer Mike Morris, AKA Mike O. Mike O put together the beat to back the lyrics in 30 minutes and the two recorded the song in less then 30 minutes in Morris’s home studio.
Darian Shepherd, a friend of McGee’s, told him to post the song on MySpace
McGee writes his own songs and doesn’t come off looking packaged like so many current R&B stars
McGee, whose voice has drawn comparisons to Cedric “K-Ci” Hailey of Jodeci, said he’s been singing since he was eight and remembers his grandparents Georgia May and Ernest Robinson playing records by the likes of Al Green, Smokey Robinson, Diana Ross The Temptations and the Four Tops.
At age 14, McGee recorded his first song
“My mother (Monique Robinson) and father (Rick McGee) decided they could no longer be together,” McGee said. “I decided because I was the last one at home it was because of me.”
“I didn’t really want to see him in the situation,” Rick McGee said, “but as a parent, if you keep going out to rescue him, he’s not going to learn too much.”
“It got to the point where all my clothes were in the back of his car and we were hanging out all the time,” McGee said. “He really took care of me. Sometimes he’d let me
stay at his home. Or if he went to his girl’s, he’d let me take his car and I’d go somewhere and sleep.”
“I started peddling on street cars, anywhere I could find someone who wanted some drugs,” McGee said.
“I don’t smoke marijuana anymore, which I didn’t need to be doing,” he said. “ I’m a singer and that stuff messes with your vocal chords.”
“I don’t want to say surprised ... I’m happy,” Rick said. “That’s something he had a passion for that’s panned out.”
“I always had a feeling I was going to be successful,” he says. “When I was younger I didn’t know it was going to be in singing, I just knew that I was going to be successful and people were going to know my story. Isn’t that crazy, my story,” he says with a laugh.
