Spotlight: Community-Driven Superstar O-Slice Shares and Teaches With ‘Goodmorning, Goodnight’

 

☆ BY Michael Gorman ☆

 
 

ON TRACK TO BECOME ONE OF THE BIGGEST NEW ARTISTS IN THE GAME — O-Slice is headed for something great. But if you ask her community in the DMV, she’s anything but new.

O-Slice has been one of the biggest advocates for DMV music over the years — with everything she does, she brings her community along. From her annual Inner Circle showcase and her collaborations with Comcast and Microsoft to the production and release of her debut EP, Goodmorning, Goodnight, her community is always at the front of her mind.

“I always thought of the people around me as my first audience,” O-Slice shared. “My first couple of shows were in front of my family … I would perform at family functions. And then that started that trend forming at school functions and church functions.”

All of those intimate groups are a part of the broader O-Slice fanbase in the DMV area. “I can just talk about my life and everyday experiences and it's gonna resonate deeply with my audience because my audience is my community.”

This sense of family is also overflowing in her management team, HYERLearnin.“They just never let me lose sight of the fact that I was making something beautiful,” she explained. “They always kept that on the forefront and put a battery in my back in times where my energy wasn't the highest.”

O-Slice expressed that this is the beautiful thing about community: as humans, we are at our best when we’re generous in spirit and energy. Evidence of this generosity is O-Slice’s proudest project as an artist, Inner Circle, an annual performance put on by herself and the HYERLearnin team.

The Inner Circle features O-Slice and several artists from the greater D.C. area, serving as a way for artists to connect and celebrate the region’s rich musical history.

“I think that’s really how the community gets strengthened, by passing on your platform,” she said.

With the quality of music O-Slice is dropping, there’s no telling the heights her platform can reach. Her debut EP, Goodmorning, Goodnight, is impressively produced and has been appropriately marketed as more than just your everyday EP.

“I understand that it's more grand than the EP typically would be, but I think that that's just how I do things,” she explained.

She hosted an EP release party a week after she dropped the project and did a virtual listening session the night before the album dropped to streaming services on March 13. In the project, O-Slice tells stories of intimate relationships past and present. Working on the project since 2018, her lyrical material is especially thorough and teaches listeners about the many emotions that come up over a long time.

Many dedicated fans will notice that her tone on the EP is different from most of her published singles. With the exception of the lovey-dovey “Sweet,” which barely didn’t make the cut, her previous singles were bars on top of bars with little break in between.

“When I started thinking about what the project would be, one of my main focuses was to show my versatility and musicality,” she said. “I wanted to be intentional about having top tier lyricism that still fit inside a song format.”

While most of her published music up until Goodmorning, Goodnight was grittier in texture, her live performances and unreleased music tends to have a similar tone to the new EP. O-Slice expressed excitement about showing her audience a more complete view of her skillset as she drops more music.

O-Slice and HYERLearnin’s communities will continue to expand with future projects, creating something of a blueprint for up-and-coming artists to build their own communities. 

With their empathetic and intentional mindset alongside such a high bar in terms of quality, O-Slice and HYERLearnin will continue to inspire many as they navigate a complicated music industry.

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