Every so often a new artist comes along with a sound so innovative, they are able to help reshape the barriers that confine mainstream music. Meet Outasight, the Yonkers, New York bred musician who weaves together the cadenced sounds of popular hip-hop and indie rock with the poignant sensibility of classic pop and soul music to create a fresh, new sound that is all his own. “People are conditioned to see certain images for different genres of music,” says the 27 year-old songwriter. “So if something looks or sounds out of the norm, it’s more difficult to understand at first.”

 

Growing up an only child in the suburbs of New York City, Outasight’s parents encouraged his insatiable love for making music from a very young age. At 8 years old, he was passed down his father’s guitar. Soon after, he began writing his own songs. “I was surrounded by thousands of records as a kid,” says Outasight who grew up emulating the diverse sounds he was surrounded by all his life. “I listened to a lot of classic rock, and pop, like the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, The Who, and also soul artists like Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye. My friends and I would form bands and practice in someone’s basement and then I would go to school and write raps and spit raps on the playground. They were like duel personalities in a sense.”

Now on Warner Bros. Records, Outasight is getting ready to release his debut full length in the not so distant future. As a teaser, Outasight will release , Figure 8, a five song EP on April 26th. Figure 8 is a pop-tinged achievement of rap and R&B, vividly complimented by Outasight’s observant lyrics and laidback harmonies.

The Outasight sound is informed by the boom-bap that provided the soundtrack to his youth and on each song OU demonstrates his mastery of the hook, using it to great affect by lacing the beat with simple, catchy lines that gradually take on complexity with each repeat listen, exemplified perfectly on the lead single, "Figure 8.”