Iman Omari: "I had no interest in being an artist; I wanted to be in music, but I didn't necessarily know how"

Growing up in nineties Compton, L.A, the absolute epicentre of hip-hop, to becoming one of the best-known producer-artists in the City of Angels who shares credits with Mac Miller and Kendrick Lamar…this could only refer to Iman Omari. Headliner finds time in Omari’s schedule to talk about being part of that hip-hop lineage, why his music touches on the metaphysical, and how using Waves plugins in his studio has helped shape him so much as an artist and producer.

“With gangsta rap and all of those things that came from Los Angeles, I would have to be affected by it, because I was there living it,” Omari says of being in Compton at this pivotal time in music. “I was born in 1990; I'm 31. So I grew up with that whole era of music. It's a part of me no matter how you fold the piece of paper.”

Expertly wearing the dual hats of a producer and artist, Omari feels the big moment that changed everything was the release of best-loved album, Energy in 2014.

“The breakthrough moment for me would be when I dropped my first project, Energy,” he reflects. “Before that, I had no interest in being an artist. I wanted to be in music, but I didn't necessarily know how; maybe I just wanted to be an engineer? Once I made that project, and it did so well — that was just the sign for me to say, ‘Okay, let's do this’.”

On top of this album cementing his success as an artist, Omari really has worked with some of the most glittering names in rap music. “I was very good friends with Mac Miller,” he says. 

“There's a song that we have called Fight The Feeling that Mac and I did together. When he was finalising the project, he ended up throwing Kendrick Lamar on there, which I thought was monumental. Then I get a call saying, ‘Kendrick wants to walk out at the Grammys to one of your loops’, and I thought, ‘Wow, that's major’. 

"So he ends up walking out to this beat I have called Calamari. I think we just had a mutual respect for each other and I really appreciate it.”

Waves plugins have formed an important part of Omari’s fascinating career, and he explains how he first came to use them many moons ago.

“My uncle Joseph Lindberg has a studio in Eagle Rock that a lot of people go to called Iron Works,” he shares. 

“I started off just using stock Logic plugins and my uncle would come in and tease me, ‘How come you're not using the H-Comp and the C1 and all the other Waves products?’ At the time I was thinking, ‘What's the difference?’ But he was showing me his mixes and they would just sound a lot bigger and better.

“So I would always go to his studio only to use his computer, because at the time he had Waves and I didn't. I got a lot of my bars by working on his machine! [laughs] From there, I never stopped using Waves. It’s definitely the gold standard for anybody that's producing out here.”

Many producers seem to have their own set of go-to plugins, particularly with the huge variety on offer from Waves, and Omari is no exception to this rule. 

“I use the H-Delay religiously. The PuigTec EQP-1A I use a lot, I like to use it for kicks. And it works really well in my mixes. I use the H-Comp a lot and the SSL Comp a lot – pretty religiously, actually.

“I basically used the H-Comp to learn how to compress. Because before, I didn't really know how to look at the VU metre. I had no real information on how to understand gain reduction and the rest. So when I was using H-Comp, it put things into perspective. 

"I would implore anybody who's starting out to try its presets. A lot of engineers don't use the presets. But if you're starting off, why not? Because that's the only way you'll be able to hear what this thing does if you don't know what you're doing.”

It’s very exciting to learn that Omari has his artist hat firmly back on, with a new album that he believes can rival the success of Energy. On the evidence of initial singles Get A Job and All They Wanna Do, it’s an LP which rap and music fans alike should be very excited about and put their energy behind.