Today we’d like to introduce you to Otis Oak.
Hi Otis, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstories.
My name is Otis Oak, Born in St. Anns Bay Jamaica, and later relocated to Florida, like many of us, I was also raised by a single mother. We lived in the inner city and I grew up in a broken home, the term family didn’t hold much weight. As a kid, I spent most of my time alone, simply fantasizing about a more ideal reality.
My mother worked 2 or 3 jobs at a time, so I would barely see her, and my older brother wasn’t interactive. My mom was overprotective, so I didn’t get to go outside and play with other kids until I was 12-13. She had good reasons, our community was dangerous, and anything could happen. It wasn’t a friendly environment, so I was forced to remain indoors.
With all this alone time, I used it creatively, drawing pictures, reading books, writing poems, thinking about making money, anything you can think of. I had a lot of interest, but it was a revelation when I first heard the music; it made me feel at ease; I was this lonely hyper-creative kid with temper outbursts.
And for the first time in my young life, I felt. Still, I honestly used to look forward to car rides to hear whatever that song was again & again. My brother had a collection of CDs, and I wanted to be like him, so I sneaked behind his back, took his CD players, and played as many albums as I could before he found out. Eventually, I just became immersed, and I used to stay up late without approval to watch video mix.
I was in love with football, but I couldn’t get as deep into it as I wanted to. My mom didn’t support it, so I spent more time writing poems before thinking about beats. I won a few poetry competitions and had the best writing grade in my class. In high school, I had to decide on ”sports or music”. My grades weren’t looking too good, so I chose music; I didn’t want to be a rapper; I wanted to be something similar to Kanye West.
I came across some information about FULL SAIL UNIVERSITY. It was an untraditional college catering to abstract thinkers. I fell in love with the idea, and I set my mind on studying Recording Arts & Music Production. Before I went to college, I wanted to build my experience. First, I wanted to start school and be 10x better than my classmates. So, I started engineering for a studio, performing and networking, I recorded at Slip N Slide for a while, but it didn’t work out; I had to move on.
My name was building, but the money was not there, and throughout this process, I ended up homeless for almost two years. This was the wrong time, but it prepared me for college. Being homeless gave me an upper hand because it forced me to put in more energy, and because of that, I gained fast experience. I took those lessons with me to Orlando and set my mind on building a super team. A lot of teams failed along the journey. It was trial and error.
Throughout college, I partnered up with classmate Justin Walker’s ”J-100”. And we launched our production company. Free Minds Imperial LLC, and from 2017-2022 we pushed and networked our brand. We interned at Black Lake Complex, DAWGMAN & JT allowed us to experience the business, giving us a wealth of knowledge and inspiration. We took that motivation and simultaneously built my artist brand and our production company.
We’ve opened up for Rick Ross, we’ve worked with Floyd Mayweather & Chris Johnson’s charity foundation (boom cups & Celebrity Sports Entertainment). We’ve also surpassed 500,000 total streams independently, and also World Premiered our single on SHADE 45. We’re currently working with Statik Selektah on a Studio EP; Kanye West’s engineer will mix the project.
So, there’s a big emphasis on quality going into this next project. We have something in the works with Q-tip from a tribe called Quest, we don’t have a time frame on it, but it’s going to happen. We also have some projects we’re working on for New Balance and Waiakea Water. We support and endorse these brands because they fit perfectly for our lifestyle.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road? Certainly, was not a smooth road, aside from team conflicts it was just random hits that we would take, jobs, schedules, housing, this is just a shortlist of events that occurred at bad times, these events would set us back, we’d lose momentum and energy.
To build anything you need momentum and energy. And when something stops that momentum, it just does something to the morale and things just don’t function the same, you have to rebuild relationships, re-make investments, and start from scratch.
And that’s the difference-maker, having the patients restart 3 or 6 times until it feels right a thing function smoothly again.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Full Sail Alumni, Artist, Musician, Producer, Mixer, Engineer, and Visual Director. My specialty is creating musical art and pushing the limits of what a person can perceive visually and sonically.
I am most proud of my skill sets. I’ve worked hard through the years to be efficient at those skills, dedicated a lot of hours reading and practicing, and trying to retain everything. What sets me apart is my abilities; not every day you encounter an artist with the mindset to go beyond the pen.
In the eyes of most corporations, I’m unorthodox, but that’s always been the goal, becoming the new archetype.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
Being easygoing, just taking it easy, not taking things personally.
You need patience and empathy in the music industry because it’s a stressful business. So, you might go a few years of feeling like nobody sees you, but they do. It’s just not time for them to use that energy.
A lot of people get discouraged, and then they stop building the relationship, and it’s just common knowledge now that it’s not what you know. It’s who you know.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/otisoak/?hl=en
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCch1qh50B58kREG2ScG4w5g
Image Credits
R.T.I MEDIA GROUP
