Canada has been good to Nigerian culture, too good. It has given us Afrocuban singer Falana, Spoken Word poet Titilope Sonuga, renowned swimwear designer Andrea Iyamah and now Omar Faleyimu, or Beats by Omar as he is known in music circles. Thanks to the success of artists like Drake finding ways to commercialize African and Caribbean sounds, traditional Afrobeats artists are getting more attention and the market for African inspired sounds in Canada has skyrocketed exponentially. Omar, a singer, producer and Dj,  is part of the afrobeats community in Canada capitalizing on that growth, interested in splicing afrobeat influences into contemporary pop and R&B. He’s been really active in the last two years and has collaborated with several emerging artists on a number of songs as well as releasing his own music. His last single, Ka Soro was released two months ago and is heavily influenced by Drake.

Omar might have shown his chops as a singer but his new EP, Omar Sur Le Son Qui Tue (Omar and the killer sound)  is really just Faleyimu flexing on all of us. His work as a producer isn’t tethered by the need to be commercially viable, so it is leagues ahead of his commercial work both in references, scope and ambition. Sur Le Son Qui Tue is a more than just a portfolio of sounds, it is a statement that speaks to the cosmopolitan nature of Faleyimu’s upbring and adolescence and how vast the influences he can draw from are.

He draws on nostalgia in the somewhat unimaginatively named Sound of Music (16 – 17), sampling the most angst ridden song off the famous Julie Andrews led musical and puts it through a figurative sonic blender, the the trap heavy result more accessible to a generation that might otherwise have seen it as kitschy.  He also samples classic Bollywood show tunes in Afro Tech, layering it over with heavy afrobeat percussions and padding its blind spots with synths to create an impressive wall of sound. Simi might have done it first but Omar does it better. Abstract Trap throws an otherwise generic trap beat into a spin with sci-fi-esque electronic tweaks, Broken is a homage to classic 90’s R&B and Lust and Love, the EP’s opener (and in my opinion, it’s best instrumental) instantly reminds of the genius of Timbaland’s production genius, as evinced by the hard to miss classic windows function sound used as percussion.

Omar Sur Le Son Qui Tue shows Faleyimu’s talent need a bigger platform, a bigger stage.

In 2017, we hope he gets it.

Listen to the EP here.