Omar Apollo

One Liner: Great singer with pop music in English and Spanish

Wikipedia Genre: R&B, pop, funk, brown eyed soul

Home: Hobart, Indiana

Poster Position: 7
Both Weekends.  Friday.

Thoughts:  Huh.  I thought this dude was going to have a zillion streams from the way that Rolling Stone talked about him recently.  They did an article about him last month that made it sound like he was the next coming of Ricky Martin, Elvis, and James Brown all rolled into one.

Real name is Omar Apolonio Velasco.  Born in Indiana to Mexican parents who bought him a guitar when he was 12.  He watched YouTube videos to learn how to play and practiced playing at church.  In 2017, he was working at a Jimmy Johns and living in an attic, and tried uploading his first song to Spotify.  It got pegged to a Fresh Finds playlist and started racking up streams.  In his story in RS, he talked a lot about how important it feels to him to be both openly gay and a Mexican-American artist who is getting big.  Seems like a really lovely guy.

His top streamer is that first single that he uploaded back in the day.  "Ugotme" with 58.9 million streams.

Really pretty tune - kind of a torchy little bluesy tune.  Since that time, he's tossed out several albums - 2018's Stereo (which included that tune), 2019's Friends, 2020's Apolonio, and 2022's Ivory.  Actually, it sounds like those first three were all considered mixtapes, and that Ivory is his debut album.  Which is a weird and messy semantics battle.  Either way, here is the top track from the new album for you to hear.  "Go Away" has 18 million streams.

Meh, just a generic pop tune now.  His voice is really good, I'll give him that for sure, but that song does nothing for me.  "Invincible" makes me think of Leon Bridges.  "Useless" sounds like he's got Thundercat on board.  "Bi Fren" is more of a rap.  "Tamagotchi" really is a rap - straight trap with a sample of 2 Live Crew.  He also has a cover of "California Dreamin'" on Spotify that is wonderful.

I'm not in love with it, but I've honestly enjoyed listening to him throughout the day.