When Chris Brown and Tyga released the “Fan of a Fan” album, it represented a shift from the typical “it’s all about me” approach to artistry, and introduced the idea that no matter who you are, we all have other people that we support, even within the industry. This Artist Spotlight represents that same type of mutual support. Oh Genius is a music producer who, as a longtime fan of my music, eventually began producing his own music and reached out for a feature. In fact, he reached out multiple times before I got around to recording it with him, due to my hectic schedule as a busy entrepreneur. Once (finally) I completed the feature, I realized it was a good opportunity to illustrate for others that with persistence and good character, things can happen in life and in your career, that at one time you may have thought not possible. He touches on the importance of goal-setting, and why passion is paramount to accomplishment. So with that, I bring you the Anomaly Music Group artist spotlight: OhGenius!
Tell me a little bit about your background. What type of kid were you growing up? Did you always know that you’d someday get into music?
I was always a big music fan as a kid but I didn’t have a musical background growing up. No one in my family was a musician and we didn’t have any instruments in the house, so the thought of becoming a musician didn’t even cross my mind when I was young. I just loved the way music could make me feel and that led me to being the kid who was constantly trying to discover new gems and sharing them with people who were on the same wavelength as me.
What was your first big AHA moment as it comes to music production – when did you decide this is something you wanna actually invest time into learning and doing?
It was the summer before I went to university to start my business degree that I decided I wanted to invest time in to music. That was a pivotal moment for me and I feel like there were two key drivers that gave me the energy to really start learning it seriously.
One reason was that I loved music so much that I just thought it would be really cool to have the ability to make songs that affect people the same way my favorite songs have affected me.
The second reason was that I feared my business degree would just lead me to a dull corporate job which wouldn’t help make the world a better place – so I needed to put my heart in to an alternative which I could be proud of and that would make me happy.
Who were your biggest musical influences? Artist, producers, writers, etc.
Dr. Dre, The Neptunes and DJ Quik are the guys who I have the earliest memories of being a huge fan of as I’d search everywhere for the songs they produced. Looking back on it now, it makes sense that producers were the people I was most fascinated by at first as opposed to artists, because I then ended up wanting to be a producer! Even though at the time the thought of being a producer hadn’t even popped in to my head.
I then started getting in to soul sample hip hop and I was listening to the group Little Brother a lot which Phonte is a part of. That naturally led me to knowing about The Foreign Exchange which Phonte is also a member of and their album ‘Connected’ planted the seed in my brain that people were out here making amazing hip hop where the rapper and the producer were in completely different parts of the world.
As I got older, my tastes started broadening outside of hip hop and the first R&B album I ever fell in love with was ‘The Foundation’ by this guy called Devante. I’m not sure if you’ve heard of him, David? Haha! Being the music nerd I am, I was talking about music with this guy on a Crooked I fan forum and he posted ‘Threshold’ from that album. Wow. Still one of my favorite songs to this date and it really got me in to R&B.
From that point forward I naturally started getting in to other music genres too and it’s all played a part in shaping what I create today.
What are some of the biggest roadblocks you faced?
The biggest roadblocks have always been when a project I’m working on with an artist never gets finished or is never released. Deep down I have a strong desire to produce a full album or EP that represents me and the artist creatively – a project that we can both stand behind and be proud of artistically, despite of how “successful” it may be in terms of numbers.
I’ve been in situations multiple times where I feel like I’ve been on route to achieving that, but something just comes crashing down which prevents it from happening. The worst scenario where this happened was when I’d invested all my energy in to producing and writing all the songs for an EP that myself and the artist were completely in love with, but obstacles got in the way of making it a reality.
Situations like that are tough to deal with and they make me feel jaded and exhausted because a vision that I’ve worked so hard on to make a reality is just taken away from me. And it’s also taken away from the rest of the world because it was music that I believed could be enjoyed by others and touch people. Situations like that really hurt and make me question why I even bother pursuing music? But I eventually bounce back and realise I love it too much to stop.
What would you say is your biggest success to date?
Honestly, I would say my biggest success is the skill level I’ve reached as a music producer. When I first started out I never thought I’d be able to make songs at the level I currently can, as well as being able to do it across so many genres too.
We recently worked on a song together, and I know that collab took a long time to materialize, but you stayed with it and we got it done. How important is persistence, in your opinion, when it comes to success?
Persistence is so important and I think it’s a characteristic that’s closely linked to passion. It’s no secret that true long-lasting success isn’t easily achieved without hard work. And the only way any sane person will keep working and persisting with something despite getting no results at first is if they have a passion for it. Persistence as a result of passion is absolutely vital for success in my opinion.
A lot of people don’t realize how important having goals is to success, and being able to actually visualize specific goals is key to that. I remember you mentioning that you had told your parents that we’d do a song, and we did a song. So many successful people have stories like that. What words of advice do you have for other people in terms of how important actually believing in yourself and your goals is, in terms of achieving success?
I think self-belief plays a huge role when travelling down the road to success and ultimately achieving goals. I personally don’t think I’ve achieved my definition of success for a music producer yet, but I think there are two factors that still help me to have that self-belief despite that. And those factors for me are having perspective and staying authentic to my tastes.
When I’m talking about “perspective” I’m referring to putting my goals in context with everything else that has been achieved on this planet. My goal is to be a producer that creates music that people love and support. When putting that goal in to perspective, it’s not a completely ground-breaking or pioneering goal because loads of people before me have achieved that level of success. So if another human has managed to achieve that, then I don’t see a reason why I can’t achieve that too because I’m just another human.
In terms of “staying authentic”, I mean that I try to stay true to my beliefs and tastes. If I tried to follow a musical trend just because it’s popular right now, but it’s not a sound I’m actually feeling as a fan then how am I supposed to be able to judge if what I’m creating is actually any good? It’s impossible because deep down I’m just not a real fan of that sound. But if I make music that aligns with my tastes and that I would be a fan of regardless of who created it, then I can easily judge the standard of my material just based on how much I genuinely love the song. And by default, if I am making songs that I genuinely love then that just naturally fuels my self-belief because I feel great about what I’m creating.
What are some other goals for your music you have, or artists you plan on working with in the future and why?
I‘ve been releasing random songs and remixes for quite a while now, so I really want to prove myself with full length projects in 2019. I want to have projects that people can just press play on and zone out to all the way to the end without skipping anything.
As a result, I’m working on a full length hip hop album with my guy TreaZon and that is shaping up to be incredible. I’m also fully producing an R&B EP too with an artist I can’t name yet due to label politics.
Also, another goal is doing more songs with David Verity, haha!
Are there any other things you would like potential fans and readers to know about you or your music?
Be there for the new music I’ve got coming – it will be worth it!
Where can people find you online?
SoundCloud – www.soundcloud.com/ohgenius
Twitter – www.twitter.com/ohgenius
Instagram – www.instagram.com/ohgeniusmusic
Website – www.ohgenius.com