Today we’d like to introduce you to Troy Fredric.
Hi Troy, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I grew up in Sarasota, Florida, and for most of my childhood I thought basketball was going to be my life. I was extremely dedicated to it—early morning workouts, riding my bike to the gym, staying late after practice, whatever it took. When that chapter of my life ended after high school, I had to figure out who I was without basketball. Music had always been around me, but that was when it really became my purpose.
My older brother was producing music, and I started learning by watching everything he did. In 2016, my brother, one of our close friends, and I made a song called “From The Jump.” We recorded it with an Xbox Turtle Beach headset, and somehow it ended up doing around 100,000 streams on SoundCloud within its first couple of days. That was one of the first moments where I thought, maybe I can really do this.
Since then, music has become the place where I process life. I started primarily in Hip-Hop and R&B, but as I grew as a person, my sound grew with me. Today my music pulls from R&B, Soul, Indie Pop, Hip-Hop, Blues, Reggae, electronic music, and even the older records I grew up hearing from my father.
A huge part of my journey has also been learning how to live through loss and struggles with mental health. I lost one of my best friends, Jack, and my cousin James, both to overdoses. Then in 2024, I lost my father to cancer. My dad was one of the biggest influences on who I am. He was much older than most of my friends’ fathers, so while I was growing up listening to Hip-Hop, Pop, and Rock, he was playing Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Elvis, Old R&B, and Doo-Wop in the car. He sang, played bongos, and was always the life of the party.
Experiencing that much loss changes the way you look at life. There have been periods where I’ve struggled internally, questioned myself, and tried to understand why certain things happen. Music became somewhere I could put those feelings instead of carrying all of them by myself.
That’s a big reason vulnerability is so important in my music now. My newest single, “Telegram,” comes directly from that place. It’s about losing someone you love and then experiencing those strange moments afterward—hearing their voice when you’re alone, seeing signs, or feeling their presence and wondering if somehow they’re still reaching out to you.
Everything I’ve experienced—the basketball years, my family, the people I’ve lost, mental health struggles, love, heartbreak, and simply growing up—has shaped the artist I am today. I don’t want to make one type of music or fit into one box. I want to take whatever I’m feeling and turn it into something real. If somebody hears one of my songs and feels a little less alone because of it, then the music is doing what I believe it’s supposed to do.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It definitely hasn’t been a smooth road. A lot of my journey has been learning how to keep moving forward when life doesn’t go the way I thought it would.
One of my first major struggles was losing basketball. I had dedicated most of my childhood to the game and genuinely believed it was going to be my future. When that ended, I lost a huge part of my identity and had to rebuild my sense of purpose from the ground up. Music eventually became that new purpose, but building a career as an independent artist has brought its own challenges—financial struggles, rejection, self-doubt, trying to get people to listen, and constantly questioning whether all of the work I’m putting in will eventually lead somewhere.
The hardest struggles, though, have been personal. Losing one of my best friends, Jack, and my cousin James to overdoses, and then losing my father to cancer in 2024, changed me tremendously. Grief and mental health have become very real parts of my life. There are days when being creative feels natural and others where simply finding the motivation to keep pushing is difficult.
At the same time, those experiences have given my music much more meaning. I’ve learned that I don’t have to hide the difficult parts of my life or pretend that I have everything figured out. I can put those feelings into the music. Some of the things I’ve struggled with the most have ultimately become the things that allow me to connect with people on a deeper level.
I’m still figuring things out, both personally and professionally. But I think that’s part of my story. Every setback, loss, rejection, and difficult period has forced me to grow, and music has remained the one place where I can turn all of it into something meaningful.
Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
I’m an artist, songwriter, producer, composer, and engineer, so I’m involved in almost every part of creating my music. I write, produce, arrange, record, and help shape the overall sound of my records. I started primarily in Hip-Hop and R&B, but over the years my music has expanded into Soul, Indie Pop, Blues, Reggae, electronic music, and other styles. I think versatility has become one of the biggest parts of who I am as an artist.
What I specialize in most is taking an emotion or experience and building an entire world around it. I don’t want every record to sound the same just because it comes from the same artist. If a song needs to feel like an old Soul record, I’ll go there. If it needs synthesizers and an ’80s feel, I’ll go there. If it needs Hip-Hop drums, Blues influences, piano, live instrumentation, or something completely stripped down, I want the freedom to follow the song.
I’m probably most known for that genre-fluid approach and for writing from a very honest place. My music touches on love, loss, mental health, family, grief, equality, relationships, and things I observe about the world around me. Records like “Now or Never,” “Substance,” “Call On The Ones You Love,” and most recently “Telegram” can sound completely different from one another, but they all still feel like me because the emotion and storytelling connect them.
I’m especially proud of my album Life Of A Broken Record because I think it represents how much I’ve grown. The project allowed me to bring together different sides of myself musically while writing about things I genuinely care about. I’m also proud that I’ve continued pushing myself creatively instead of finding one sound that works and repeating it.
What sets me apart is that I’m not trying to fit neatly into one genre or follow whatever sound happens to be popular at the moment. My influences stretch from Eminem and Mac Miller to Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles, Prince, Queen, Stevie Wonder, Sublime, and Michael Jackson. All of those different worlds have shaped how I hear music.
Ultimately, I want someone to be able to go through my catalog and experience different sounds, eras, emotions, and ideas while still recognizing the same person behind all of it. I want my work to feel human. That matters more to me than fitting into a box.
Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
I love Miami. The food, Spanish food specifically haha. The people that surround it. The atmosphere over there is so unique. The beach has been home to me forever. I live 3 hours from there in Sarasota, so the vibe is a little similar, just smaller.
As far what I like the least, I’m not such a huge city person. I love nature a lot. Not a huge fan of skyscrapers and things like that but I don’t mind vacating to places like MIA, New York, and LA.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://linktr.ee/TroyFredric
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/troyfredricmusic/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1fVab6Wg9P/?mibextid=wwXIfr
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@troyfredric?si=gAY7uhYtncj5QMFI
- Soundcloud: https://on.soundcloud.com/JoRoaIdQ3UtKddLQ4X
