Yesterday, I got a phone call from Jamaica. My friend “Richie” wanted to know if I had heard of OMI and his hit song “Cheerleader”. Now, as many of my friends know, mi head nuh too good sometimes so I had to think hard. I quickly replied “no, don’t think I’ve heard of him”. Richie went on to explain that this young Jamaican had managed to do what no one out of Jamaica has done in over a decade…break into the Billboard Top 10!
Amazingly, three years after the initial release of OMI’s single ‘Cheerleader’, it is the first Jamaican release to hit the Billboard Top 10 since Sean Paul’s ‘Get Busy’ in 2003. In fact, after spending 12 weeks at the top of the Billboard Hot 100, Wiz Khalifa’s “See You Again” was knocked off the top spot by OMI’s “Cheerleader”.
Although, ‘Cheerleader’ was only a modest hit in Jamaica back in 2012, when my friend Richie heard the song played for the first time by OMI’s manager Clifton “Specialist” Dillon (the man behind Shabba, Patra and Mad Cobra) he instantly knew it was a hit. It took a few more years for the rest of the world to catch up! In truth, the song got a new breath of life from a recent remix by the German producer Flex Jaehn.
After shooting a brand new video and dominating the charts in Europe, OMI’s single is now touted as 2015’s “song of the summer” by Billboard. He is now signed to Ultra Records, the U.S. based EDM label. Gwaan mi yute!!!
