Music Dude presents: Endorsing Omarion

I'm a music dude. Not some schmoe who really likes music, I'm a music dude. I dance with every genre besides country, but something tells me I might get into that one day, especially after I was reading a piece in the New Yorker on Charlie Parker and they said he liked country music...matter fact, Ken Burns said the same thing. So, if Bird was dancing with some hillbilly music, then maybe I can grow a liking for it.

Anyways, part of being a music dude implies not only a deep appreciation and vast knowledge, but an addiction.

And I'm an addict. Can't go without it. Sittin home, shuttin off the lights and listenin on a Friday night is the equivalent to going out to party.

I'm such a music dude. I play it when I cook, when I shower, when I jog and at 3am -- real loud. I've had the cops called on me more times than I care to divulge.

When I wake up in the morning and head to drain the snake, I don't always urinate, sometimes I piss a James Hendrix riff or some of the feedback he pioneered when he'd bite the strings with his bucked teeth. I mean, I digest so much music that it has to come out some way.

When I sneeze, sometimes it sounds like some Delfonics harmony, so old black women say "Amen" instead of "Bless You".

Just last week I was walking down K Street when I passed this tasty thang in a sundress, so I kept looking as she walked by...and commenced tripping over a bike that was on it's kickstand. The bike messenger was right there and I thought he'd be mad because I'm a heavy dude, so I bent up his fame and mangled his chain. But do you know what he said to me? He said: "Maybe I'm buggin', but when you crushed my main mode of transportation and source of income, it sounded like 'Bombs Over Baghdad'" My pants had ripped to, from the crotch all the way up my crack to the belt loop....but even that sounded a DJ scratching a record.

I'm telling you, I'm so music.

And being a music dude, I thought I'd spit a little about some music.

First, and admission and exhortation...

I'm feeling that new Omarion track "Touch" to the Nth degree. Now before you go crying "HYPOCRITE!", let me explain.

I'm a melody and and arrangement dude...and right now, no one is killin em like my main dude Pharrell from the Neptunes. My sis Lyd was saying the other day how she felt the way he's flipped his style from the "Give it to Me", "Super Nore" style to the more melodic, groovin "Excuse Me", "Touch" style..and we all know I brush my teeth with groove. So here's the deal...am I an Omarion fan? Of course not. But all he is, is a talent. people write his lyrics, arrange his vocals and make his music and he lends his voice. B2K was wack because the music handlers were wack. Omarion's first track was beyond wack, because the dude who made it was wack. But when Relly got ahold of his voice, he produced the hottest R&B song of the year thus far (it's between that and the Amerie joint).

Listen, not everyone is Alicia Keys or Bilal. That's why if you're comparing Whitney Houston to Mariah Carey, you gotta go w/ Carey, because the voices are both historic, but Carey is a writer. What made Houston great is that she had great music people behind her. TRUST that we could've lost our generation's greatest voice to bad music producers long before we lost her to drugs.

It's so key to R&B and soul music, the producers and writers are. Unlike a good deal of Rock & Roll and most hip-hop and the majority of jazz; R&B and Soul is about finding a voice and then getting that voice with the labels cadre of writers and producers and letting the magic happen. Some of the most beautiful and melodic music I've ever heard is some of that old Dionne Warrick. Now she was not close to the vocal equivalent of Aretha Franklin, or Chaka Khan or even Gladys Knight...but she had this bad white dude named Burt Bakarak (sp?) behind her and what they produced was so riveting it could melt rock to lava.

So now lets take my new dude Relly from the Tunes. Did anyone see how he took Timberlake and made him hot? I'd have pissed up JT's nose if I saw him onthe street when he was with N'Sync...but what's the bottom line? The bottom line is the lil curly head white dude could sing very well and happened to have bought some soul after years of listenin to black music. So Relly took the voice and made some very hot records, as did Timberland. "Rock Your Body" is banging record, I'm sorry. And this is comin from me, a music dude. I'm speaking with authority.

When I sweat, I don't smell musty...I smell like Roy Ayer's "Stone Soul Picnic".

Well, Relly made Omarion hot for this one track, too. He said, "Yo O, here's the track, here are the lyrics and I want you to sing like this." From there, you can;t go wrong..not w/ Relly on the boards. I don't know about the rest of the album, because I wouldn't be caught dead buying an Omarion album...but if Relly has a big presence I will definitely find someone who has it and give it a listen.

If you ask me, Omarion is no different to Usher at this point and as soon as he fully sheds the B2K remnants, every jane, sally and sue -- grown women -- will be hoppin on his goods.

It also doesn't hurt that he made a video, a hot video, in the mold of Michael Jackson's "The Way You Make Me Feel" and Usher's "You Remind Me".

I'm not saying become an Omarion fan, because I am deinitely not...I'm just sayin to check his new track because it's a banger.

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That's more than enough R&B talk to last this blog a couple months. My next music blog will be an in-depth look at the music and principals behind Common's new critically acclaimed piece BE and a review of jazz trumpeter Terrence Blanchard's new album and a look at the state of today's stunted jazz.