Odetari Is One of the Biggest Dance Artists of the Year — So, Who Is He?
This past February, Taha Othman Ahmad was substitute teaching at a high school in his native Houston. But instead of executing lesson plans, he was at his desk uploading the music that would, over the next few months, make him one of the most successful electronic producers of the year thus far.
“The students were like, hitting their dab pens in class, secretly under their sleeves,” says Ahmad. “The teachers walked in and smelled it and were like, ‘You should have been supervising the class better.'”
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Ahmad was fired from the job. That same week, his landlords threatened to sue him to get him out of the condo he’d been renting. “I literally had no idea what I was gonna do,” he says. “I had like, negative hundred dollars in my account.”
Then his songs started blowing up.
The first was March’s “I <3 LATINAS,” a one minute, 33 second ode to, yes, Latin women, couched in a galloping kick drum and loads of digital chimes and mechanistic flourishes. That was followed by April’s “GOOD LOYAL THOTS,” a sped-up anthem with lyrics about bad love playing over a production that sounds like getting stoned in space. The day after releasing it, Ahmad woke up and saw the song had generated 10,000 creates on TikTok, with the songs also picking up immediate traction across DSPs
Having made a plan for what to do if any of his music hit, he started “rapid-fire dropping” the catalog of music he had at the ready: May’s “YOU’RE TOO SLOW” and “NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER” June’s “LOOK DON’T TOUCH” and last week’s 3×3 EP, a three-track collaboration with the producer 9lives that clocks in at six minutes. (The all caps styling on the songs is meant, he says, as an “attention grabber.”)
The early success wasn’t a fluke: Odetari’s first three releases all hit the top 10 of Hot Dance/Electronic Songs, tying him with Marshmello and David Guetta for the third-most top 10 hits on the chart for 2023 so far. (The trio trail Rihanna at No. 1 and Bizarrap at No. 2) Last week, “YOU’RE TOO SLOW” entered the chart at No. 40, and this week (dated July 22) sits at No. 37.
Together the songs have more than 13 million on-demand streams in the U.S., according to Luminate. He’s also currently the No. 1 position on Dance/Electronic Songwriters, a chart he’s been on for the last nine weeks.
But while Ahmad has become one of the year’s top-charting dance artists over the last five months, he’s been making music for a decade. He started producing beats and rapping ten years ago, when he was 13, taking inspiration from SoundCloud rap. By 2018 he was making “generic trap stuff,” but found he didn’t like the industry people or “toxic competition” of that scene.
After a years-long break from music, he and his manager decided they needed to find “our own thing, our own sound,” with Ahmad starting on music again this past January. He settled on a quick-hit style inspired by his primary passions — anime and video games like Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy and Metroid. Ahmad calls the genre “ODECORE,” the definition of which on Spotify is music for “late night gaming, gym sessions, and anime binging.” Written and produced entirely by Ahmad, it’s hectic and woozy and strange, altogether giving a feeling like being at a rave happening inside the internet.
He played his first-ever show this past June, with management currently lining up more sets for later this year. (For these shows, Ahmad is envisioning “light effects and fog,” “super crazy visuals” and “animatronics.”) His first solo EP is scheduled to drop this August.
While major labels are generally taking a more cautious approach to signing viral artists, Odetari’s string of hits have demonstrated his early successes weren’t just a fluke. He recently entered into a multi-album partnership with Artist Partner Group.
“Upon hearing ‘NARCISSISTIC PERSONALITY DISORDER,’ I was immediately intrigued,” says APG CEO Mike Caren. “Odetari is creating an entirely unique world around his music. Learning that Odetari produces and writes everything in its entirety, I knew he was a truly extraordinary artist with a career-long vision.”
“Odetari’s prolific output of quality music and content have sparked explosive growth on all platforms, building the foundation for a career artist,” says Jesse Wylde, who works in Artist Development at APG. “Early growth started on SoundCloud and Spotify. We’ve fostered a core online community in his Discord server that shares a multitude of interests spanning gaming, anime, music and beyond. He’s a visionary artist, crafting the overall world of ODECORE that aligns with his fans interests. The live strategy is to grow a hard-ticket headline business in his primary streaming markets, bridging online and real-life fandom.”
Five months after losing his job and having less than zero money to his name, Ahmad is now living in the three bedroom Houston townhouse he recently purchased. He spends most of his time hanging with his girlfriend, going out for meals and making as much music as he can without burning out. His substitute teaching days already feel like a long time ago, but he does still have a presence in the classroom where he first uploaded his now famous tracks.
“I used to sit in class and the students would do TikTok dances to songs that were trending,” Ahmad says. “Now occasionally I see kids at that same school dancing to my songs. It’s pretty fire.”
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