The great thing about Omega fandom is that it requires no explanation. Either you haven’t heard of him (in which case, read the Omega profile I wrote for The Fader last summer) or you have, and his bad-assness is utterly self-evident. It’s simple: this former reggaeton choreographer is “El Fuerte”, one of the best musicians around in any genre right now, period, the undisputed dark king of Dominican merengue urbano / mambo. Plus he’s kinda scary – we’re not fooled just because he dropped the “y su Mambo Violento” from his name. (When you find an Omega fan, ask ’em about Rita Indiana — they’ll have an opinion on her too.)
Omega El Fuerte plays twice this weekend in NYC – as I tweeted: “all NYC’s latin ‘cosmopolatino’ websites that *didnt* mention OMEGA’s gigs here this weekend: #FAIL” (gracias a Carolina for the head’s up). Although it’s always nice to be reminded that much of the craziest stuff happening on this planet is primarily offline, lazy journos & surfers miss out.
Ears a la calle… If you live in New York City and don’t have your ears to the street, then you won’t have noticed the strong strange Puerto Rican proto-reggaeton Playero revival emanating out of Dominican cars… That sentence might not make any sense, but it sounds exactly like this new Omega track bumping in a style that was popular in PR like 15 years back:
[audio:https://negrophonic.com/mp3/Omega-tirense-to.mp3]GIF from last night’s show:
and an excerpt from my Fader profile on Antonio Peter De La Rosa Aka Omega:
His street-viral swagger means that folks at every point in the food chain—from Dominican TV producers to dudes in Washington Heights who cobble together concert recordings—figure they can make a buck by tapping into El Fuerte’s power. “We get a lot of fans buying flights to Santo Domingo just to see us perform,†he says via phone from the Dominican Republic. Visa and deportation problems have kept international Omega appearances scarce… [issue 62 PDF]
I have to say, the promoters were super-lame about getting the word out. But nothing an “Omega el Fuerte” google alert couldn’t fix.
I think I was one of the only people in mainstream press to write about the tour:
http://www.nydailynews.com/latino/2010/09/15/2010-09-15_untitled__omega15.html
I’m patiently waiting for Omega to start his own fashion line and/or hairstyling studio chain. The pic from your NY Daily article is incredible!
was he wearing makeup? did he do his hair with jet-pack flames?
He didn’t seem to be wearing makeup, since I could see the tattoo between his eyes. I was mesmerized by it! His hair sure was sparkly, too.
papi esas canciones estan brutales especialmente la d super estrella……