OMI deserves credit for overcoming bad press

Veteran producer-musician-arranger Clive Hunt says recording artiste OMI deserves credit for selling over 500,000 units in the US for his debut album, 'Me 4 U', despite receiving a negative review from 'Rolling Stone' magazine.

The controversial magazine, which last year branded dancehall music as a tropical house genre, much to the disapproval of local artistes and musicians, claimed OMI's album did not live up to the standard set by hit single, Cheerleader.

However OMI, who has been relatively silent since the negative review, is now the one laughing, as the project was recently certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America.

"As a creative person, your art might be misunderstood by the person who is doing the review. I have had one or two bad reviews in my lifetime, but that has never dampened my spirit. Specialist, OMI and the rest of his team deserve credit because they were brave enough to jump out of the box," he said.

POP ARTISTE

Hunt said reviewers might have been misled to think OMI was predominantly a pop artiste, since Cheerleader, which was originally released as a ska single, only caught their eyes when it became pop.

"The persons who love Cheerleader are young people ... think about it. Who are cheerleaders? Persons from that age group don't care about the entire album and they will buy it for just one song. They probably never even saw that review because that age group is not checking for content in a Rolling Stone magazine," he said.

Despite the negative impact that a bad review may have on a project, the producer says he welcomes the criticism.

"If a reviewer and I are not on good terms, I might not want that person to review my work. But aside from that, I have no problems with reviewers once they are objective," he said.

OMI recently collaborated with Shaggy for a new record titled Thank You. The effort has been streamed over five million times on Spotify.