In the spirit of full disclosure, I’d never even heard of Oddisee until a just few days ago. Our beloved Music Editor, Leilani Polk, thought I should take a listen, I liked it, and he had a show coming up at the Orpheum on Friday. So I started listening more, and more, and more.
What I learned, of course, is that none of this really matters to Oddisee. It never has. Over the course of nearly two decades, this 35-year-old D.C. artist has worked at a ferocious pace to sculpt a sound that's incessantly his own. Equal parts producer, no, composer, and emcee, Oddisee's style orbits around the force of hip hop, but has danced around the tenets of “genre" over the course of countless releases.
Flowing from the boom-bap vibes of '90s rap to mind-bending-ly intricate jazz, lazy day soul, and nearly everything between, his latest instrumental mixtape The Odd Tape, is now available.
I got the chance to talk with Oddisee before his show about everything from his Sundanese heritage to surrealism, Drake, Deadpool and more. Give it a listen below.
Live, Oddisee is something to behold. Complete with a full band, he commanded the stage with an effortless onslaught of lyrical tracks from his recent Alwasta EP, 2015's The Good Fight and various other material. A cult-following of fans rhymed bar-for-bar in the front row, while heads bobbed in the back to the good-natured vibes that permeated throughout Orpheum. For his first show in Tampa Bay, I'd say the royal “we” showed as much love as he could ask for, and frankly, what he deserves. Some more photos from the Friday night show below, featuring Oddisee with his band GOOD COMPNY (guitarist Ameer Dyson, keyboardist Ralph Real, "MPC" Unown, bassist/sythman Mr. Turner and drummer Jon Laine).
