How Afro-Electro Singer OWO Made A Virtual Reality Dance Party Into A Music Vid
Tracee Atanda-Owo, who performs under the moniker OWO, couldn’t figure out what to label her music. So she made up a genre instead.
“My sound is Afro-electro R&B,” she told me. “I’m really influenced by a lot of different music, so I want my own work to reflect that.”
It’s fair to say that OWO has done a good job reflecting her variety of influence in her work. Her most recent video for a song called “jO,” was filmed as a virtual reality dance party, yet still manages to maintain a soulful vibe.
“How’d you come up with the idea to make this?” I asked.
“My manager, who’s also a friend of mine, also has a digital development company, and he was like, we should shoot your new video with these new cameras that record virtual reality, so I was like, okay!”
Tracee and her manager, along with 30 others — “A lot of my work comes from highly collaborative efforts” — shot the video in two weeks at a studio in Brooklyn, and claim it was the easiest video they’d ever shot.
“We weren’t even sure if the whole thing was going to work out,” she says, laughing. “And then it ended up being the easiest video we’d ever shot!’
“Did it feel appropriate for the song?”
“Definitely,” she said. “Writing the song was also quick for me. I loved the energy of the track that my producer gave me. We were like, let’s work with a style that people can work with when they’re sweating their ass off on the dance floor.”
I asked her what she was up to these days.
“I just left a recording session,” she said. “I’m just finishing up my EP, I’m grinding on that right now, and I’m really, really excited for what’s coming up.”
If the future includes OWO bumping at virtual reality dance parties, then so are we.
Check out the video below, and find OWO’s Soundcloud here.
