BIOGRAPHY
OMAR-S
a.k.a. Alex Omar Smith
BORN
I was born in the ‘70s, I can’t give a particular year, that’s secret. (laughs)I grew up on both sides of Detroit, East side of Detroit and the West side of Detroit. Conant Gardens the East side of Detroit is the same area that a lot of musicians came from, like J-Dilla, Jackie Wilson and so on. The West side is more like a middle class, high class neighbourhood. Growing up in Detroit was fairly interesting because I grew up on both sides, so I know how it is to live good and I know how it is to live – well, not so good. I wish that I grew up in the 60s or late 50s in Detroit, musically, but I was lucky because in the early 80s, there was so much new music out: rap was new, house music was new, techno music was new, booty music was new, electro was new, there was Michael Jackson, Prince, Roger Troutman, George Clinton, Boy George, and all the electronic music from England. So I do think that I was lucky to grow up in the early 80s.
FAMILY
Family is a big thing for me as far as influences go. My father grew up in the Motown era; I’ve probably listened to more Motown than anyone else in dance music today. Sometimes I actually think I’m the only person in dance music that actually likes Motown. Most people like that 70s shit, which is cool, but that’s not my thing. I’m big into the early 50s, 60s stuff.
My second oldest brother was into Run DMC, the Fat Boys, the Skinny Boys, Houdini, all that new rap stuff. I was into that for sure, I remember Planet Rock when they didn’t play the vocal mix on the radio because it was weird at that time to play rap music. They only played the instrumental on the radio at first. My sister is ten years older than me, my oldest brother who’s 11 years older than me, and they were listening to house. Then my cousin, who was 5 years older than me – he was DJing house. My second oldest brother bought me turntables and my sister, she bought me a keyboard, so my family has had a big part. I can go on...
My grandfather on my father’s side built two of his own buildings back in the early 60s and when I came along, video games were just getting big, in around ’77, ’78. So my grandfather and my father had an arcade on both side of the store along with penny candy, and I’ve always been into arcade games. I was born in the right era as far as video games and electronic music, you know? Video games have had a big influence on my productions, definitely – with video games, it was all about playing hard and playing for the highest score. It wasn’t like video games today where you just walk around just pick shit up and shoot somebody, you had to play real fucking hard. You had to play like you were on drugs! And skills, you know what I’m saying, make you figure things out. That’s what keeps your mind going. I used to fuck with Rubik’s cubes, all that shit. That’s the kind of person I am, very ambitious. My father used to always tell me, ‘You can do anything you want as long as you work hard at it.’ I can write a story about my life, I’ll tell you that. People would be fucking surprised what I’ve been through. You would never imagine.
MUSICAL ROOTS
I can tell you the real story about Detroit, if you want to know. Most people only grew up on one side of the town – I saw both sides, and I was young. On the west side, it was always rap music and a lot of people liked house. On the east side, it was ghetto music and booty music and rap music; people on the Eastside would think you were gay if you listened to house music.
I didn’t start going out til ’92, ’93. Until then, I had a lot of WGCI and WBMX tapes from Chicago, and a lot of my cousin’s friends were making mixtapes so I’d watch them DJ all the time. I listened to the radio all the time, especially the new dance shows.
I was around 13 when I got my tables. I had two Technic 1200s, it was $250 for them. My brother bought them for me. I was making mixtapes all the time – but I was doing that before I got the tables, since ’87, making mixtapes of just house. My sister gave me the keyboard when I was 11 or 12, I was playing a lot of Chicago house records, like ‘Jack Your Body’ and shit like that. And I was always learning how to hook things up – the wrong way! (laughs) I’ve been producing since the early 90s, when I was about 17 or 18.
LABELS AND PRODUCTIONS
What happened was after a while I kept making tracks, I was making so many tracks. I was just stackin’ them bitches up! And my oldest brother came once and brought me an article by Ron Murphy in the Detroit Metro Times; it said there was some guy cutting everybody’s records so I thought, ‘Fuck it, I gon cut four tracks real quick.’ I had two finished already and in a minute or two, I made another track. I made an appointment and got the record cut - that was the Omar-S 001. That was in June or July of 2001. At the time, I didn’t know anything about distribution; I had the money to get the records cut but I didn’t know the first thing about distribution so this shit got sat on for years.
I guess the label started taking off around the time of Omar 004, I established it properly around 2004 or 2005. The name FXHE is a trip because I was only about 3 years old I wrote all over the walls in our laundry chute wall FXHE and wrote my age,like 20 years later I walk pass and notice it and said to myself I’m gonna one day named this my record label. It’s still written on the wall in my daddy’s house.
All the people I release on my label are from Michigan – because people from Detroit or Michigan need to be heard.
As a producer, I don’t know what to look for as far as having a certain sound. Sounds just come about. I just fuck around until it sounds good. The majority of my shit is made in a matter of minutes. I’m one of those people that can’t sit still. I just can’t sit in the studio for 30 minutes or for fucking hours, I do the shit and that’s it. The track ‘Psychotic Photosynthesis’ – that was made in minutes. Every part was played and that was it, and each part only took about ten seconds.
DJING
I love to play hard techno, I like to play house, techno house. Living on the east side of Detroit you had to play hours of just fast jit shit, booty shit, and electro shit for hours straight {no house}. Most of the times with no headphones!
I’ve DJ’d in New York a few times. I did a party in Chicago and I think a lot of people didn’t know who I was, there was probably about, you know, 2 ½ people there. And then in Toronto there was like 7 ½ people, and it was all friends and shit. (laughs) I’d say my favourite places to play are fabric, Sub Club and Panorama Bar. It’s all about the sound. A lot of my music sounds better when it’s really, really, really loud, because I made it really, really, really loud. All the speakers in my studio are blown right now. The same headphones you see me DJ with are the same headphones I’ve had for fifteen years. Every track I’ve released came through those Sony headphones that I travel with.
I usually DJ best when I’m scared, because once you got the crowd going, you gotta keep them going. That’s when I’m on my toes.
THE MIX
My booking agent and I were talking about doing a mix for fabric over the last year, and for me, over the last year I haven’t really been feeling anybody’s music, there’s been no music that I feel. I’d rather do a mix for fabric that’s all my own shit, because there are still a lot of people out there that don’t know about FXHE records or Omar-S or Oasis, so I think it ended up being a good move for both fabric and for Alex Smith. I did a few different versions, mixes, of few of the tracks on the CD, and there are about four tracks on there that haven’t been released yet. I know a lot of new people will listen to it, so of course I put my important songs on there, but I wanted to make it varied and mix it the right way. That’s why I mixed a lot of the songs a different way; but with the famous songs, I didn’t touch those because I want the new people to hear the original. Sometimes when people do compilations, they put their hit songs on there but they fuck them up with different mixes of them; they fuck it up or they get some other wackass motherfucker to mix it. I didn’t want to do that. I kept them in their original versions so new customers – whoever buys the fabric CD – will be like, ‘Damn, who the fuck is this guy?!’ I want it to be the best fabric CD ever. I don’t need other people’s music; I got over 100 songs released. I can make fucking six fucking fabric records right now. I can probably make fucking ten CDs just of unreleased shit.
The mix is for all different moods; for years, I always noticed when listening to dance music in the daytime, it really doesn’t sound good. Unless it’s raining outside – then it kind of fits the mood. But listening to dance music at night, it just sounds good. It’s hard for me to explain, but it’s a good mix for driving, walking around, walking to your job, or having a party at your house; I think the mix fits any type of mood, or certain times of day. Even getting romantic listening to it at night.
THE FUTURE
I’m releasing an album after the summer, to follow up the fabric mix. I’m releasing an EP on Theo Parrish’s label Sound Signature. I’m doing some arrangements, engineering and mastering for Theo Parrish, and re-mastering some Leron Carson cassette tapes from the late 80’s for Theo’s Label in a few months. I really love to engineer and arrange other people music them better than my own music!
I don’t really know the future. I just live for today.
