Xavier Omar’s first Tiny Desk performance released Monday at 5:30AM, and it’s been a long time coming. He made it a San Antonio affair by utilizing a local spot, Rosella Wine and Coffee, and had singers and musicians from San Antonio as well. Many in the CHH space have been following Xavier Omär since the when he used to go by a different artist name. Here he is years later and he is flourishing just like many of us knew he would.
One thing that stands out is that Xavier Omär was right. In 2015, he penned a break up letter to the CHH space and explained his intentions and his goals. He knew that his music didn’t solely belong in the Christian Hip Hop space and he he could reach more people if he branched out. He followed up that move with the decision to change his artist name to his real name. He stated in several older interviews that his old name was limiting and their was a ceiling attached to it. Five years since the change, and one can’t help but realize that Xavier Omär was right about his career moves.
In the Christian space, we are guilty of attempting to own artists. If they start with us we want them to stay with us and remain our little secret, unaware (or uncaring) of how selfish that is. Anytime an artist mentions wanting to branch out and do something different, we get apprehensive. And of course, there have been artists who have left this space and left the faith altogether. There have been those who got an audience with the help of CHH and once they made it to a certain level, pretended not to even know what CHH was. Xavier Omär is not one of those artists.
Omär has been writing about love from a biblical perspective for the longest time. Since leaving our space, he’s always had one explicit faith based song on his albums. His song “Blind Man” garnered the attention of Jada Pinkett Smith and helped grow his audience. He’s worked with Issa Rae and has done many other great things in his career. It’s more than likely possible that none of these things would have happened if Xavier cared about what the sub-genre thought of him and if he wasn’t in tune with the artist he wanted to be.
Xavier has gone on to headline his own tours, tour internationally, and his latest album ‘If You Feel’ charted at number 1 on the iTunes R&B charts. And now, he’s performed at his first Tiny Desk, an achievement that many artists wish to have under their belts. Whatever Xavier Omär goes on to achieve in his career, just trust he knows what he’s doing and support him. Check out Xavier’s performance below and go cop his latest album if you haven’t already. What do you think about Xavier’s performance.
