One of Invest Atlanta’s first Creative Industries Loan Recipients is Devin “Egypt” Robinson, founder of Change A Man Media, LLC. Robinson created Change a Man Media to help redefine human images. The company’s goal is simple, creative video productions with more black doctors, lawyers, industry leaders, husbands, wives and most importantly, happy African-Americans.
“Anybody who sees the movies, books, TV shows, and articles are typically coming from someone else about us,” said Robinson. “What ends up happening is that there’s a whole new narrative about who we are, what we do, why we do what we do, and it doesn’t come from us.
“So I wanted to create something that when you leave, you got excited. You left and you said, “Yeah, that was awesome! That’s me, he’s talking about me.’ And every one of my shows, it’s the same reaction. Brothers come up, hug me, some crying. Because they’ve never seen anything about them that wasn’t derogatory, that didn’t demean them, that didn’t make them feel emasculated. It let them feel like what they need to feel: encouraged.”
Invest Atlanta will be providing a $35,000 loan for the production, post-production, and distribution to make Devin’s one-man show, “Black Men: Naked Truth” into a film. This stage play portrays the unique talent of one man who portrays seven distinct characters. This stage play has had multiple sold-out shows since its inception in 2014. In 2017, Black Men: Naked Truth was invited to the National Black Theatre Festival.
“With the funding from Invest Atlanta, I promoting, I use it to promote the show, to film the show, and then once the show’s filmed, we now pay for commercials to promote it because if you put it on Amazon or whoever purchases it we then promote it all across Atlanta,” said Robinson. “And then we also use part of the funding to pitch it to different film festivals and also to the American film market to see if someone like Netflix or Amazon wants to pick it up so that way we can make even more of an impact because now it’s on TV.”
Robinson has written, acted in, produced and executive produced many films. He gained his stage name “Egypt” from his role on the hit OWN series “Love Is.” He has received international acclaim dedication for the following projects “Black Man: Naked Truth” one-man show, “Tranquil Inferno” and “5 Steps to Get Over Your Ex.”
He has dedicated himself to providing high-quality education through the medium of media started in 2006 with the birth of AIDS Awareness Poets Inc., an organization created to educate people about HIV through entertainment. From there, he created Change A Man Media LLC to create positive images of African-Americans. His professional journey has also included stops on BET, OWN, MTV, Apollo and TEDx.
Robinson added: “That process of applying for this loan was a beautiful process because it taught me a lot about business, and I pride myself on being an entrepreneur, and not just being part of the show but the business part of show business. And I learned a lot.
“I think this was just a beautiful process. And nothing was overdone, there was no extra work for no apparent reason. Everything was right on point and everyone was so professional."