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ON THE RISE
In “Bottom Line,” listeners have an opportunity to hear some prime R&B and soul by the best artist they haven’t heard of yet: Jimmy McGee.
He’s been around, making his living in music for almost 30 years or so, all over the United States and Europe, singing and playing guitar, but now he is out with his first song in a new phase of his career.
“‘Bottom Line’ is a song about just getting through life.”
“You know,” he says, quoting the lyrics, “‘I got to stay on my toes, even if you’re friend or foe, it’s a do-si-do, around we go.’ This is like life.”
The video alternates scenes of life in gritty urban locales and spectacular night city shots full of lights and motion.
Jimmy is from Ohio, living now in Columbus. His partner, Big Change, producer and owner of the record label, Oxford Records, is also from Ohio, Cleveland. They are a team, Jimmy says.
“The music is the R&B format, and we’re out of Ohio, and this is the breeding ground for soul and R&B.”
The music pulls you in, guitar first, slow and easy, then bongos, punctuating the guitar and catching your attention. Then bass guitar sliding up and down the scale in a little funk turn that sucks you into the song.
When Jimmy’s smooth, mellow voice comes in, you’re ready to listen.
“I’ve been everywhere,” said Jimmy. “I’ve lived in Las Vegas. I’ve played guitars for a few reggae bands and R&B bands. I’ve been frontman for my own stuff, I’ve been to Europe. I’ve been quite a few places.”
Now 42, Jimmy “got my first guitar dollars when I was about 14, 15,” so, music has been his thing for a long time.
“I’ve been putting out records, but it’s just a different thing this time. I’ve got a partner. It’s much better, in terms of business. Artists, we want to be artists, but we don’t want to get ripped off. It takes a team to make a career.”
Jimmy has a voice and music like the R&B and soul artists of at the beginning of the golden era of R&B — Marvin Gaye, Al Green, Sam Cook, Otis Redding.
“They’re all influences, all of them, and my contemporaries, like Anthony Hamilton, Lyfe Jennings. Those guys are in my age group.”
“I consider myself a soul survivor. I started out playing guitar in church, and hearing the choirs and the quartets, and that is where Sam and all those guys came from. I’m of that lineage. Wholeheartedly.”
Big Change added Musiq Soulchild and Gil Scott to the list of influences, and Jimmy agreed.
“We’re all that,” he said. “I mean, this is where black singers come from.”
Big Change wrote “Bottom Line” and plays guitar on it, along with Jimmy.
“This song is literally life’s ballad,” said Big Change. “This is a hood ballad. It’s how life goes. The pace is of a love ballad, but it’s about life.”
“That’s a good interpretation,” said Jimmy.
“Everybody can relate,” said Big Change, “to having hard times in life and persevering.”
Jimmy and Big Change have about 20 songs ready. Some Jimmy wrote, some Big Change, and some they wrote together.
They don’t have a lot of music out yet. Their operating theory is put out a song, promote it and, when the song hits a saturation point, then release another.
“You know,” said Big Change, “we ain’t trying to be super megastars. We’re looking to get Jimmy out doing what he loves to do — performing. We’re just trying to open the door so our sound can become a part of the commercial entertainment world. We deserve it.”
Their sound deserves it, too, and hearing is believing. From a listener’s point of view, the only flaw in their plan is wanting more of their music.
Like, now.
Connect to Jimmy McGee on all platforms for new music, videos and social posts, and encourage them to put out more music, sooner rather than later.
ON THE RISE
A savant singer and composer, the California-based artist Odelet began performing her own music while in college studying visual art at Portland State University. But well before that, she had already developed an eclectic taste in music.
Odelet is a native of Detroit, and one of her fathers was all about the Detroit music scene. Her other dad, meanwhile, was into old school country music. And a young Odelet soaked it all in.
Now an independent artist with a fast growing following, Odelet has followed a similarly diverse musical path with her own releases: she debuted with the avant-garde 19-track album Experiment in 2021, which served as an exercise in minimalism; then she dropped twelve songs on The Angels Album in 2022, which took her into the world of soul and R&B––genres that have been close to her heart since she was a child in the Motor City.
And now Odelet is preparing to release her third album, Pisces Pie, on May 11, which she describes as an ode to classic hip-hop production and siren singers.
“It was right after I got out of high school that I delved more into hip hop and listened to artists like A Tribe Called Quest,” she says. “It’s really evolved over the years because I’ve always been around very different kinds of people and music listeners. I’m always just eating it all up.”
The idea for Pisces Pie was born a few years ago when Odelet was recording Experiment, which served as a compilation of sorts for her body of work as a stripped down and very minimal singer and songwriter. But already she had an idea for something like lo fi hip hop, with beats serving as the backbone of the project.
“I’ve always really loved playing around with presenting writing in a stripped down way, it’s really fun for me creatively,” she says. “With The Angels Album, it felt like I was ready to stretch out into that sort of soulful soundscape, but things are never really planned out for me. Even when I’m in the midst of getting a project done, always in my mind I’m on to the next thing, too and I love feeling expansive in that way. I have an idea, then I have the next idea and it always fits together like each perfect puzzle piece and I just roll with it.”
The 11-song album Pisces Pie isn’t the only new puzzle piece; she’s also released a new EP titled Odelet’s Hufflepuff that’s something of an appetizer for the full project.
“It’s a little grouping of songs that are setting the tone that gets to continue and build to the full project,” she says. “It’s not dissimilar to courses in food; it’s kind of like prepping the palate.”
Songs like “Cinderella,” which feature on the four-song EP, are an amalgamation of sorts of her works: it’s driven by a minimalist beat and instrumentation over which Odelet sings with her soulful voice––it’s even got some jazz in it. The result is a sound both timeless and brand new.
“The sound I am really drawn to is very much rooted in an analog sound,” she says. “It’s the depth of it and I’m super nerdy about it so I love creating a sound that feels sort of like it’s of a bygone era. I’ve always been really into old world things in general.”
“I love how much it can be read in a very literal way or felt in a very literal way,” she says. “It’s a love song, or about this notion of someone talking about themselves. It could be taken in a very literal way but I also love that all the new songs can be interpreted by people in very unique ways to themselves. They are really love letters to myself, and ‘Cinderella,’ especially, is kind of falling in love with yourself.”
Odelet still has her passion from college for visual art, too, and she accompanied The Angels Album with an award-winning experimental music visual which has since been screened in more than 50 film festivals. In 2022 she also co-founded the production company Everlasting Tape, which produced her second project (and first full band effort) and is very connected to her visual art work––more of which is on the way for Pisces Pie.
“I’m very much interested in playing around with a more abstract approach to a visual representation or accompaniment to the music, so where it feels connected but almost in an ineffable way, very dreamlike,” she says. “I was calling it dream-scaping. It’s creating this multidimensional world that you get to feel transported into.”
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