Corey Johnson (born September 16 in California), known professionally as Sunspot Jonz, is a hip-hop artist from Oakland, California. A founding member of the underground hip-hop collective Living Legends, he has spent decades pushing writing and producing hip hop music.
Corey Johnson entered the state’s foster care system at an early age. He was adopted at age four by a couple from Monroe, Louisiana. However, the home environment became abusive, leading to further instability during his formative years. Johnson often ran away from home, finding temporary shelter in parks, laundromats, and abandoned vehicles, before being returned to foster care. Throughout these hardships, he turned to imagination and creativity as a means of survival, frequently drawing, inventing characters, and making music—practices that would later form the foundation of his artistic career.
After his adoptive father, Cleotha Johnson, left the family, Johnson was primarily raised by his mother, Brenda Johnson, while continuing to navigate the foster care system. He attended Berkeley High School but flunked the ninth grade and was subsequently sent to live with relatives in Louisiana, where he enrolled at Ruben McCall High School. There, he became an honor roll student and was eventually allowed to return to Oakland, California. He completed his secondary education at Skyline High School in the Oakland Hills.
Following high school, Johnson enrolled at Chaminade University in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he studied for two years. During his time at Chaminade, he met DJ Blast at a campus event. This connection led him to travel to Maui, where he recorded his first demo at DJ Blast’s home studio. Shortly afterward, Johnson left college to pursue a full-time career as a writer and musician.
Career
Sunspot Jonz has gone by other names before, tsuch as BFAP, which stands for Brother From Another Planet, and Vision.[1]
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
