Omar Samuel Pasley, better known as OMI, is just about leaving the charts with his song “Cheerleader”, while a new song “Hula Hoop” is ready to take the success over.
The “Cheerleader” singer could now be categorized as a dance artist, but he usually fuses reggae with pop. In fact, the original version of “Cheerleader” was a nice little reggae song until a record company came up with the idea to remix it.
When the idea of a remix was born, two people were approached to create a remix. Ricky Blaze updated it to a dancehall remix, but the speeded up house version by Felix Jaehn is the one we all know and love.
OMI decided, early on as an artist, that he wanted to have his own sound, which, funny enough, has now been given to him by a remix DJ. What can I say?! Sometimes, the best ideas are not your own…
His new single “Hula Hoop” sounds, pretty much, exactly like “Cheerleader”. There’s no better way to describe it, other than it sounding like a copy-paste creation. It is incredibly catchy, though, and makes you want the summer back (like the weather isn’t already making you feel that way).
OMI is an artist, who’s grown up and tried everything. He actually started as a rapper and while developing his singing talent, he stayed true to listening to a lot of Hip Hop before finally deciding to get into reggae, with which he scored a couple of small hits, before his “Cheerleader” success.
With “Hula Hoop”, it looks like OMI left his reggae roots behind and swapped it for a house sound and vocal melodies that remind you of Taio Cruz, at times. In fact, Taio Cruz also had a lot of the same lyrically cheesiness in his songs, but managed to bring it in such a catchy way that no charts were safe.
As much as “Hula Hoop” duplicates that idea, I do think it’s really riding the wave of the success of “Cheerleader”, rather than having had the strength to have made it on its own. But hey, I’ve been wrong before. The song did receive a gold status in Australia.
When you hear it, you might expect that Felix Jaehn would be involved in this one as well – it’s got the recognizable saxophone and all the sounds from the first hit – the song is actually produced by OMI’s co-writers of the track, Matt James and Frank Buelles.
“Stir It” is also scheduled for a single release and shows a little bit of a difference in sound, but still continues on his new found dance roots. Some things just had to be.
And if you’re a bit like me and started to wonder what actually did happen to Taio Cruz. He’s actually still releasing stuff.
