An entrepreneur is not always considered a leader, Omar McCallop is more than just a leader but a true entrepreneur in his own right. Without passionate individuals representing local areas to the fullest how will Hip-Hop flourish in the coming years. The decline in sales, and overall drop off of originality has to have some sort of correlation with the inability for local artists to break through. Therefore I challenge every person to name one artist from their area that they would support whole heartedly. Until then one man stands as a testiment that there is still hope for music....Enter Omar..illroots.com: First off I must thank you for sitting down with me O, the pleasure is all mine.
Omar: Oh my pleasure.
illroots.com: If you could briefly explain the Carolina Music Awards to the people?
Omar: Alright, the Carolina Music Awards is just like your VMA, MTV Movie Awards, the only difference is our primary focus is on artists out of North and South Carolina. Just because we feel like that this is a region that a lot of talent, a lot of back up singers and musicians come through this market, yet we hardly get that forefront for any of our main artists. So my company and a couple other affiliate companies developed the Carolina Music Awards as full award show that will filmed for television to look at artists in this market. As well we will be giving out what we call “The Carolina Music Awards Best Of” or “CMA’s Best Of” and what that means is that we are going to give a Carolina Music Award to the Best Artist Out of Georgia, Best Artist Out of Virginia, out of Texas, out Florida, L.A., New York. This is used to show appreciation for the music outside of our market. You know the music is not a vacuum. Everybody listens to everybody’s music and you take a little of that with you as you develop. We all [are] apart of UGK at the end of the day, we all apart of Jimi Hendrix on the rock side of things, we are all products of somethings, it’s a mixing bag. So you know we wanted to show our support and respect to those outside of our market [that are] doing big things as well.
illroots.com: What separates this award show from every other award show out. What would make the CMA’s more TV ready than any other award show.
Omar: Actually it would have to be the production quality. I guess I can go into a little of my background. My background stems from [a] television background. A little known fact is that the reality show that I produced called “Entrepreneurs” was one of the first reality shows produced by an African-American on broadcast television and I make that distinction because you have say “College Hill” which is on cable, our show is on broadcast so I have to make that distinction. So I have a television and film guy and just from that relationship I am certain that I can produce a product that is television ready. I’ve done it already. I talked to TJ (TJ Chapman) and JB (Julia Beverly) and they are going to be on my Advisory committee for the awards. I think since they come from a music and magazine background I feel that their production is gonna be different. I need them on that site of court because they add that dimension. As well my company is diverse already, we’re in music and television, we’re in film, animation, so I try to pull from peoples expertise. Like I said it different from the Ozone because we have an inside and an outside situation where were going to focus on the Carolinas, which is an untapped market, but at the same time we are going to support different regional markets across the country. Where as Ozone is more of just a conglomerate, so its going to be a lot different.
illroots.com: Well, uh What artists coming out of North Carolina do you feel are going to be making a bigger splash? Omar: I would say Royal T out of Charlotte, Charlie O’s in Charlotte, he’s getting a lot of radio play out of Charlotte as far as the Carolina’s, Greensboro you got Brandon D, he’s real strong in Greensboro market, you have a lot of city based artists yet nobody as really taken over the entire region and that has become one of the ongoing challenges is that in order to dominate a city region in our area is not like Atlanta, that is such a large region. So what Carolina artists have to do, for us to accumulate the strength to dominate Atlanta we would have to almost dominate a state or two states just because the size of that city. So we have a lot of city celebrity artists that are working to establish themselves within the market. That is one thing that the Carolina Music Awards will do, it will bring artists from these two states together and people can see hey this is “XYZ” persons and this is “ABC” persons so we bringing that National element at the same time which is a tremendous thing. As well you have Shelly B which is as far as the Carolina’s are concerned she in the premier female artist. In Raleign you got Crime and he’s probably the number 3 selling artist in the country right now. You have Young Soulja that has a video out in circulation and he’s very strong street wise.
illroots.com: How big is this event going to projected to be?
Omar: You know the beautiful thing is that we’re six months out and we already have about 3 Magazines and 10 websites that are going to blasting the logo and blasting the name and logo out and information out for the award show. We’re are going to have a tremendous amount of pre promotion. We’re in the process of working with some major artists that are interesting in coming through I will go ahead and put this out there we are in conversations with Rakim in order to do a tribute to him on the hip hop side, as well as T-Pain’s people for him to be involved in it, and the CMA’s are not just rap and hip-hop but rock and country. So we’re talking to Leo Daughtry, the guy from American Idol because he’s from North Carolina, so we’re talking to him as far as the rock side of things. As well as Clay Aiken and Fantasia Barrino which is from Raleigh. I just learned that Dream is originally from North Carolina. Yet the whole Rakim thing is close to becoming a done deal. So we put in reserve a 600 person venue, yet the other day we just put a 2,000 person venue on hold. But as the production began growing it makes it challenging to run a quality production you know as keeping people quiet, so if you’ve ever been to an award show you have your seat fillers and it’s a production that is run. So as you increase the size the challenge the production quality, but its growing. I know that once we confirm the Rakim award then that alone will help a lot and everyone has really given us a lot of love. As well that the entire ticket goes to charity to provide resources for children, so children have the joy in learning about music because that is what we’re celebrating. Every ticket that’s purchased will actually go to music programs. We’re actually talking with VH1’s Save the Music to have them involved.
illroots.com: So lastly whats the biggest thing that you want people to come away with when they leave this show?
Omar: The show is for the general public obviously but more importantly for the record companies and the magazines and the powers to be rather its on our dime or their dime. I just want people to be heard.
illroots.com: Thanks O I definitely appreciate you and Illroots.com Family support this positive movement. Check out the CMA BIG BREAK and Check out more at www.myspace.com/carolinamusicawards.
