{"id":1396,"date":"2010-09-12T14:28:12","date_gmt":"2010-09-12T21:28:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/?p=1396"},"modified":"2010-09-12T16:05:19","modified_gmt":"2010-09-12T23:05:19","slug":"omarion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/2010\/09\/omarion\/","title":{"rendered":"Omarion"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>OMARION<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Think you know this smooth\u00a0R&B star? Think again<\/strong><\/p>\n

Forget what you might have heard about\u00a0R&B artist Omarion.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think people misconstrue who I am a lot of the time,\u201d he says. \u201cI blame it on the illusion of the game. You might think Omarion is going out to the club, partying and having an orgy with 10 women. If a rumor came out like that, people might believe it. I felt like I really wanted to share more of who I am through my music.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s just what he does on his new album, Ollusion,<\/em> which reflects the Los Angeles native\u2019s growing personal and musical maturity. To help bring his vision to fruition he collaborated with the likes of T-Pain, Marques Houston and the Song Dynasty production team, which was behind Omarion\u2019s 2004 hit \u201cO.\u201d \u201cYou want the chemistry to be right,\u201d Omarion (born Omari Grandberry) says of his experience working on the new album. \u201cYou don\u2019t want to be in the room with someone who has the idea of the kind of music you ought to make but it\u2019s not what you want.\u201d<\/p>\n

Omarion asserted more control over his musical destiny than ever before on Ollusion,<\/em> his third solo effort following his departure in 2004 from the hitmaking vocal group B2K. \u201cThis project was the most personal to me, because I was the most involved on this one,\u201d says Omarion. \u201cWith the other ones, I would get assigned an A&R guy. He\u2019s doing the job of finding records that might be hits but not necessarily songs that pertain to your life. When you make a record and it\u2019s about you,<\/em> a different emotion comes out.\u201d<\/p>\n

The songs on his new album that pertain most directly to Omarion\u2019s life might surprise fans who think the smooth-talking balladeer is all about the quick seduction. In fact, \u201cWhat Do You Say\u201d finds the singer suggesting to his paramour that they go on an old-fashioned date and do \u201cnormal things.\u201d \u201cThere are a lot of songs on there talking about love and acceptance, and being able to take your time and recognize what it is,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Then again, there\u2019s the lead single, \u201cI Get It In,\u201d a pulsing club banger featuring rapper Gucci Mane. The song came together quickly in the studio as Omarion swapped lyrical ideas with\u00a0producer Tank.\u00a0\u201cHe was doing this melody, and it had this 808 sampler in it, and we were just going back and forth and it was so dope,\u201d Omarion says. \u201cThat was one of those records, when we were finished, I called my manager, I called everyone, and said, \u2018OK, we\u2019ve got the first single!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2013Eric R. Danton<\/p>\n

Jan\/Feb 2010 Issue of\u00a0M Music & Musicians<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

OMARION Think you know this smooth\u00a0R&B star? Think again Forget what you might have heard about\u00a0R&B artist Omarion. \u201cI think people misconstrue who I am a lot of the time,\u201d he says. \u201cI blame it on the illusion of the game. You might think Omarion is going out to the club, partying and having an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[910,907,911,32,909,908,10156],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1396"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1448,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1396\/revisions\/1448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mmusicmag.com\/m\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}