I was born and raised in Jamaica, Queens, New York.
It's a real hotbed of music, of inspiration.
John Coltrane lived in Jamaica, Queens.
James Brown had a house in Jamaica, Queens.
I remember going to John Coltrane's house as a kid,
because my mom and dad were friends with him Naima,
so we would go over there and hang out.
I must have been around five or six years old.
My uncle purchased for me
a little toy drum as a holiday gift.
My dad, after that, purchased a real snare drum for me.
I actually still have that snare drum.
It's a black lacquer Ludwig snare drum.
And then by the time I was 10,
I started playing gigs with my dad's band.
He changed the name of the band to include,
'Omar the 10 year old drum sensation,'
which I thought was really embarrassing.
I was like, 'Do we have to?'
It's too much pressure!
But it was during that time period that I met Nile Rodgers
and we had a local band together
that actually used to play at Great Adventure Amusement Park.
Bernard Edwards used to come to the park and hang out with Nile all the time,
and so they were talking about Chic even then.
and so when we finished our stint at Great Adventure that year,
Nile and Bernard said,
'Omar, we're getting ready to go to Paris.
You should come with us.
We're starting a band. We're going to Paris.'
I had just gotten accepted to Music and Art High School
in New York City.
So I said, 'No, I don't want to be a high school dropout
before I even get there.
So you guys have fun in Paris -
I'll see you when you return.'
Well, the next thing I heard from them
was on the radio.
All of the French influence
on the band was evident
with the name Chic
and the singles like 'Le Freak'
and all of that stuff.
So, of course, I kicked myself a few times
for not getting on the plane with them.
This is just a small piece of it.
The Best of Kool and the Gang.
Kurtis Blow, The Breaks!
Break it up, break it up, break it up!
The Bowie connection came from Nile,
from my old friend Nile.
David had enlisted him to produce that record.
The idea was to use the Chic rhythm section, initially,
to record those tracks
but something was going on with
Tony Thompson and Bernard Edwards,
and they weren't able to
- for whatever reason -
make those early sessions.
I don't remember the details
but I do remember getting that call
and being very excited about it
because I love David Bowie.
When I get to the power station in New York City,
the first song that we recorded was 'Let's Dance.'
That's how the session started.
Oh shoot, here it is.
I remember the drum sound being very unusual.
The engineer
- a guy named Bob Clearmountain -
had this Ludwig Black Beauty snare drum
that was part of the studio stock.
Back then, recording studios had their own
drum set stock
and he had taped some
small contact mics to the rims.
He was doctor and he was cooking something up
Bob Clearmountain, he was cooking something up, man.
He was a genius.
The drum pattern in 'Let's Dance'
was really an improv that we organized.
Typically with pop records
the drum beats are two bar patterns,
four bar patterns...
'Let's Dance' was an eight bar pattern.
We really worked out -
it's very subtle.
But if you go back and you
listen to the two phrases
you will hear
that it's really an eight bar phrase.
I think that gave it an interesting foundation.
In the late 70s and early 80s,
there was a recording studio construct
that had been operating
with a group of people
that had been used to making records a certain way
and the role of the drummer inside of that construct
had a community of drummers very busy.
There was even a segment of the work
called 'the demo session.'
Roger Linn changed everybody's life
when he dropped the LinnDrum
because a lot of those writers then understood,
'Wait a minute -
I don't have to bring in a bunch of guys
to do the demo.
I can actually
work up the demo
with these drum machines
and these sequencer products
that allow me to hear the idea
before I do the final session.
So now, 1979, 1980,
'T'ings are starting to change'
What I would say about it was,
it scared the crap out of a lot of people
that weren't ready for the change.
But I'm 19, 20 years old,
I'm new in the game.
I'm looking around, I'm going, 'Well, hold on.'
'What is that box called?
Let me write this down...'
Save up some money,
I'm going to Manny's Music on 48th Street, New York City,
and I'm gonna buy me one of these things,
I'm gonna reprint all of my business cards,
and it's now gonna say,
'Drummer and Drum Machine Programmer'
and then I'm going to rip up those old cards.
'Here's the new one!'
That's where my journey began with technology.
I was actually using a drum machine
as a part of my writing process
because I just like some of the crazy sounds.
So what I would do is, I would
program beats,
hit play,
and then I'd sit down at a drum set
and play with that and record all of that stuff.
My process now has come full circle
because I find myself sitting at acoustic drums a lot.
Even for an artist like Daft Punk,
for instance,
when they called me I thought,
knowing what I knew about their music,
that my collaboration with them
was going to be more on the electric side
of what I do.
But the robots were like,
'No no no, no, no. No.'
'We want you to play acoustic drums.'
'Really? Okay. Acoustic drums it is.'
Tomas had a keyboard rig set up
and he had ideas for
bass lines and grooves
that he just wanted to jam on.
So he would play a groove and
- it was myself and James Genus on bass for those sessions -
we would jump in,
find a tempo,
then we'd set the click,
play again,
but we might play that groove for five or ten minutes.
I never heard 'Get Lucky' in the studio.
Basically, what we were doing was
we were creating a rhythmic,
song construction kit
at the studio
of original content,
rather than pre-formed loops.
These are loops that they were making right there,
that they could use
and cut up the way they wanted.
So it was interesting.
Yeah, we're gonna get a live drummer.
We're gonna get a live bass player.
We're gonna jam.
We're gonna let this do what it does with the humans,
but then we're gonna take it back
and we're still gonna apply our
production concept to it.
And I think that that's what made it unique.
There were already companies
using drummers to create loop content
for all of the various DAWs that were out there
and initially, I wasn't interested in doing it.
Initially.
Instead of doing it in a studio space
I would make it very personal
by doing it in my home space,
where I'm really comfortable, where -
again, I've had a studio for years.
So now I'm creating something of value.
I wanted the people that invested in this
loop pack
to feel like they were actually
in the room with me.
I think that's what we captured.
I went into a restaurant the other day
- a vegan restaurant in New York City -
there was a DJ there
and she played something that I was on
and I knew the bartender,
so the bartender was like,
'Oh, that's him! He's the drummer, right there!'
So we started talking. She was like,
'Whoa! I didn't - oh, you're Omar!'
We were introduced and she said,
'You know, I've been using your Loop Loft stuff
at home.'
She talked about this feeling of being in the room.
So when she said it I was like, 'Mission accomplished.'
