‘I'm closer to the end than the beginning': British soul legend Omar on EastEnders, Stevie Wonder and his industry battles
Omar's fans are united in believing that he's a genius that should have been a superstar. 'The undisputed architect of what we now know as neo-soul', goes one YouTube comment, acknowledging that the British musician's albums predate the genre's US benchmarks such as D'Angelo's Brown Sugar and Erykah Badu's Baduizm. Another: 'Really don't know why Omar didn't go on to be big worldwide.' And then: 'D'Angelo was the closest they [America] had to someone of Omar's calibre and even he pales in comparison from a wholly musical standpoint.'
'That's dangerous talk!', the musician laughs when I relay the last quote back to him. But 40 years into his career, he's proud of his musical legacy. 'When I started out at 14, I said I wanted to make music that, as soon as you hear the first four bars, you know it's me,' he says. 'I think I've achieved that.' His other goal? 'To make pure bangers.'
Born Omar Lyefook, the 56-year-old is an MBE-decorated multi-instrumentalist, producer, songwriter and sublime singer, who has scored a musical and acted in EastEnders. Stevie Wonder wanted to write a No 1 for him, and he's worked with the neo-soul era's US greats, including Badu, Common, Jill Scott and the late Angie Stone. While he may not have their profile, he's put out music since the mid-80s and his importance is acknowledged not just by YouTube commenters but by successive generations of tastemakers and artists, from livestreaming sensation DJ AG – who recently did a pop-up gig with Omar outside a London McDonald's – to Children of Zeus. As Konny Kon of that Manchester neo-soul duo puts it: 'Omar is a national treasure who laid the foundations. His production should be recognised just as much as his vocals.'
I meet Lyefook at the Canary Wharf outpost of plush restaurant chain Boisdale, where he's playing with supergroup the British Collective. Their website's no-messing mission statement: 'to put the soul back into British R&B and keep it there.'
'I live in a world where Prince, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston are still alive,' says Lyefook, and he's not just feeling nostalgic because of music. 'There's certain things about this era where I'm like, can we rewind? All this madness with Trump, the wars …' He pauses. 'It's a lot to get into. I'm just a vibes man.'
That's modest. Lyefook longs for unity on his optimistic ninth studio album Brighter the Days, a self-described magnum opus over 18 tracks, originally born of lockdown frustration. 'I'm closer to the end than I am the beginning, and I refuse to be negative about stuff,' he says. 'I need to find the good in everybody.' In person, he's exceptionally down-to-earth but on record, he has a supernatural gift for blending genres like funk, jazz, samba, hip-hop and salsa, and on Brighter the Days, he turbo-charges this with lush strings. There's plenty of transatlantic guests, too, plus others closer to home in Brighton – namely his teenage twin daughters. 'I had to pay them proper rates. £200!'
Lyefook grew up in a musical family in Kent: those Latin influences could have subconsciously come from his Cuba-born grandmother, his Chinese-Jamaican father is a reggae drummer who put out his son's first singles on his label, and his siblings are all musicians. He was classically trained at Guildhall School of Music and Chetham's, and his first professional gig was playing percussion with Paul Weller's Style Council in Japan in 1989. Weller offered his studio for Brighter the Days and played on the track On My Own. 'That dude had [about] five albums out in one year' recently, Lyefook jokes. 'It took me seven to get one out.'
His breakout moment was in 1990 with There's Nothing Like This – and at the time, there really wasn't. Riffing on Ohio Players' Heaven Must Be Like This, the gently sinewy soul-jazz ballad detailed a romantic night in, over a seriously memorable groove. 'I just pictured a fireplace, a rug … Fuck knows what 'champagne wine' is,' he hoots. The song and album of the same name each went Top 20 when they were rereleased on Norman Jay and Gilles Peterson's Talkin' Loud label a year later.
Lyefook fondly recalls that time: the acid-jazz explosion, driving his Saab convertible around London clubs and getting his trademark eyebrow piercing. But while he earned the respect of critics, execs at the major label that owned Talkin' Loud offered less support. 'Norman and Gilles being DJs, they're into the music. The higher ups, they're not,' he explains 'They'd say, 'there's no budget for videos', but then they're giving budgets to all the rock acts.' Those execs asked for his string sections to be played on synths, 'so we don't have to pay the musicians. Then Jason Donovan had a song out on the same label and he's got the exact same string section I was using.'
His subsequent albums didn't break him in the US, despite cameos such as Wu-Tang Clan's Ol' Dirty Bastard who was enlisted on 1997 track Say Nothin' for '10 grand, two hookers and a bottle of Baileys,' laughs Lyefook. 'I had nothing to do with it!' Meanwhile, in the UK, 'it was one in, one out'. An A&R told his manager: ''We don't need Omar, we've got Craig David.' It doesn't matter where I go, there's something stopping me from getting that attention.' But he doesn't like to dwell on it. 'If I wasted time thinking about that then it might affect my creativity.'
Lyefook has released plenty of albums in the following years, and his track It's So, a euphoric Afrobeat-style shuffle, has endured in DJ sets since it first lit up dancefloors in 2004. He's rarely stopped gigging, yet he hasn't put out an LP since 2017. Instead, there have been forays into acting: in 2022, he was on Albert Square for a two-week stint playing Avery Baker, estranged brother of Mitch Baker. 'When they showed me the part, it's a dude who wears a three-piece suit, smoking a cigar, driving a Bentley and playing the piano in the pub.' So not that far from real life? 'Exactly. I was like, 'This is me'.'
Brighter the Days took a while on several fronts: finishing songs, finding a label and finalising paperwork with collaborators (he also underwent brachytherapy in 2024 for early-stage prostate cancer). Lyefook wanted Common, who he'd worked with on the rapper's seminal 2002 album Electric Circus, but it wasn't to be. 'I'm a big believer in timing. First time I was meant to work with Stevie, it took eight years. Don't set your watch by him, put it that way.'
In 1992, he was in LA, and his manager also had Wonder as a client. 'He played my album to him. Stevie wants to write my first No 1. Fantastic! Midnight, I got the call: come down to the studio. Finally, he's ready. We're talking. And then …' He snores. 'So that was the end of that session. I waited all day for him to fall asleep.'
'Then seven or eight years later, I got a phone call out of the blue when I'm in London: 'Yo, man, it's your boy'. Who's that? 'Steve!' Steve who? 'Stevie Wonder!' Yeah, bollocks – sing me something. And he did.'
For the next two weeks, 'I was like his ambassador. I had to take him to restaurants, clubs, hotels. We finally went to the studio, but the song we started with, it's alright but it's not blowing my skirt up. And then I had an idea to take him to my friend's studio where they were jamming' (the result was the 2006 track, Feeling You).
Another session involved the late beatmaker J Dilla who Lyefook had met through Common in Detroit around 2000. 'We went to a strip club, J Dilla paid for a stripper, and then we went to the studio. It seemed to be a normal Tuesday for him!' A beat that Dilla made with Omar in mind was recently rediscovered by Lyefook's brother, the producer Scratch Professer, but 'it wasn't ready for this album, probably the next one'.
Among the guests that did make it on to Brighter the Days is UK rapper Giggs. 'I wasn't that aware of him before,' says Lyefook – Giggs wrote 'Yo, uncs!' as he reached out via Instagram. 'That's what they call me now. Well, it's better than grandpa.'
British rap, he says, can be 'gritty, and you got to be hardcore' – very different to the 'good times, barbecues, chilling out' vibes of soul (though the pair find mutual ground on We Can Go Anywhere, where Giggs invites you to help yourself to his party buffet). Lyefook appreciates grime, he says, but 'it's so not my world. I mean, Stormzy's album cover [2017's Gang Signs and Prayer] was how many men in balaclavas? Great artist, but they didn't have that in Canterbury.'
Lyefook once protested the Mobos for not having a soul category. His peers, including Bluey from Incognito, unrolled posters on the red carpet reading Mobos: Where's Your Soul? 'And so they relented and made it R&B/soul – but those are two different animals,' Lyefook laments. 'One year I got nominated and Adele's in the same category. It's not just a black and white thing, it's generational. I'm just filler.'
The musician is content these days, however, with his elder statesman role. 'It used to be, 'my sister likes your music'. Then 'my mum likes your music'. Now it's 'my nan likes your music',' he quips. 'I've been lucky – they passed it down through the generations.' While other musicians are part-time, he continues, 'I've managed to make a career that can pay the bills. It's not ostentatious. I would love it to be. But the love that I've been getting has been enough.'
Brighter the Days is out now on Impressive Collective and BBE Music
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Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
TV's race to the bottom: How sexual humiliation and explicit romping are taking over telly as desperate show bosses resort to extreme measures to combat dwindling ratings
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We just felt like it was too covered up. Extra gossip.' Love Island fans hailed Thursday's episode of the show 'TV gold' as the 'messiest series yet' saw a game send the villa into meltdown It seems to be working - from multiple talks of threesomes, to contestants more erratic and ruthless than ever, the current series has been carnage so far. Love Island fans hailed Thursday's episode of the show 'TV gold' as the 'messiest series yet' saw a game send the villa into meltdown. Viewers saw tensions reach boiling point when a challenge, Look Who's Talking, saw things go from bad to worse - with host Maya Jama saying it was 'madness'. The Islanders each took a card and read out the quote then collectively decided which of their fellow Islanders said it. Drama was brewing after Harry and Yasmin headed for a kiss in the Hideaway, meaning his partner Helena was already fuming. During the game, it was revealed the duo had actually shared three secret smooches when a quote was read out from Harry. As Harry's lies unravelled, Megan exclaimed: 'You owe it to Helena to be f*****g honest, you p***k!' Sharing their thoughts on X, fans wrote: 'This game was [fire emoji]'; 'Love Island UK is still superior this season has been great'; 'THIS EPISODE IS SO GOOD please'; 'This might be the best season of Love Island I've ever seen'; '1000/10 RATED EPISODE'; 'This UK season is so good omg it's been mess every episode'; 'THIS IS PEAK TELEVISION WHOEVER HIRED THIS CAST NEEDS A RAISE I ACTUALLY CANT.' Fans seem to be loving it this year - but with the behemoth that is Love Island showing no signs of stopping any time soon, one has to wonder how far bosses, in coming years, will be prepared to go. Perhaps the more you feed the beast, the more brutal it gets. Too Hot To Handle Too Hot To Handle first hit UK screens in 2020, with ten singletons heading to an island villa for four weeks. Sound familiar? But there was a twist - they are forbidden from kissing, sexual contact or masturbation and money is taken out of the £100,000 eventual cash prize pot any time a rule is broken. The series was a hit and has since gone international, with a Spanish-language edition launching on Netflix last week. It has already been full of drama, steamy moments and fiery arguments. It has already been full of drama, steamy moments and fiery arguments And like its fellow Iberian reality dating programme, Temptation Island, it has quickly attracted a wider viewership than just those in its native country. One particularly intense moment saw a male contestant on the verge of a breakdown after his partner told him her attention had strayed to someone else in the house. Fitness model Enri Sánchez and influencer Saray Marín coupled up near the start of the series and found they got on well, risking it all a couple of times to steal a kiss or cuddle. But when new man Cristhian joins the show, he chooses Saray to go on a date with him - where they share a passionate kiss. She soon approaches Enri for a chat about how her feelings have changed after it - and it quickly becomes too much for him. When the pair sit down on a sofa, Enri says, 'My heart's beating so fast', to which Saray replies gently: 'Calm down, relax.' He looks visibly nervous, unable to meet her eyes and with closed off body language, as she opens: 'Right, this is hard, huh?' She puts a tentative hand on his arm as he replies, 'Just be truthful, be honest with me', which she agrees she is going to do. In a brutal confession, which leaves Enri shocked, Saray explains: 'We spent the whole day together. I was laughing the whole time. We had an amazing time. 'He kissed me. And I kissed him.' Enri asks if she likes Cristhian and she says she does, before he responds uncertainly: 'I don't know. It's not like you cheated because we don't have that kind of thing.' She replies firmly, 'That's right, we don't', as he continues: 'But this is complicated. I feel really betrayed, to be honest.' Saray is taken aback by this, going from stroking his arm to comfort him, to saying incredulously: 'Seriously?' In a confessional shot, Enri admits: 'I feel like a complete loser. I've been talking her up all afternoon and now I find this out.' As the camera flips back to their conversation, Saray confesses: 'I can understand that you feel bad - but not betrayed.' He soon fires back: 'Listen, I swear, I've been having feelings for you. You're my support system here.' Enri asks if she likes Cristhian and she says she does, before he responds: 'I don't know. It's not like you cheated because we don't have that kind of thing' But nothing can prepare him for her real bombshell admission about Cristhian: 'There's something else. We decided that we want to share a bed tonight.' This is too much for Enri, who explains in a confessional: 'Look, right now, I want to leave. 'If Saray ends up sharing a bed with Cristhian, I don't think we can fix this.' In the moment, he says: 'I don't feel like crying but I feel weird.' It seems some tears do soon start to fall though, as he wipes his eyes and turns away from Saray, who looks sombre to say the least. Some reality TV viewers, used to sadness and showdowns, might think this moment is tame in comparison to the kind of drama they are used to seeing. But even this desensitisation should perhaps make us re-examine our viewing habits. Do we really appreciate that what we are watching is real vulnerability and distress? Do we actually feel anything about that? And how far are we willing to let it go?
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
JK Rowling reveals her involvement in writing scripts for the Harry Potter TV series - after online trolls demanded she be removed from her own show over her views on transgender issues
JK Rowling has revealed her involvement in writing scripts for the upcoming Harry Potter TV series, after online trolls demanded she be removed over her views on transgender issues. The author, 59, who created the fantasy novels on which the show is based, took to X to rave about the first two episodes after reading them fro the first time, confirmed that while she did not pen them herself, she did work closely with the writers. She said: 'I read the first two episodes of the forthcoming HBO Harry Potter series and they are SO, SO, SO GOOD!'. When one follower enquired: 'So you are not doing the writing for the show?' she replied: 'No, but I've worked closely with the extremely talented writers'. Last year HBO defended Rowling after being inundated with complaints about her serving as an executive producer on the new series. In a statement to Variety, HBO said: 'We are proud to once again tell the story of Harry Potter – the heartwarming books that speak to the power of friendship, resolve and acceptance. The author, who created the fantasy series, to confirmed that while she did not pen the scripts herself, she did work closely with the writers 'JK Rowling has a right to express her personal views. We will remain focused on the development of the new series, which will only benefit from her involvement.' The decision to adapt Rowling's novels has faced criticism from numerous fans, with many calling another adaptation 'unnecessary.' Others have stated they plan to boycott the project due to the author's comments on trans people. Earlier this month actor Nick Frost revealed he'd been targeted by trans activists after accepting the role of Hagrid. The actor, 53, will star as the legendary Hogwarts groundskeeper in the much-anticipated show, which is set to begin filming this summer. However after sharing the exciting announcement on Instagram, Nick revealed he was forced to turn off the comments on the post due to being swamped with criticism for collaborating with Rowling. Distancing himself from her trans views, Nick told the Observer: 'She's allowed her opinion and I'm allowed mine. They just don't align in any way, shape of form.' Rowling has been vocal on the subject of trans people for several years; in 2018, a spokesperson explained that her 'like' of a tweet calling trans women 'men in dresses' had been a 'middle-aged moment'. And following the Supreme Court judgement on April 17, Rowling has consistently referred to transgender women as being 'men'. Despite turning off interaction with fans, the publication asked Nick if he believes the debate may overshadow the new series. He added: ' I don't know but maybe it shouldn't blow over? We shouldn't just hope it will go away because if makes it easier maybe we should educate ourselves.' In his announcement post, the actor posed with a classic copy of the first book in JK Rowling's series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone. He is set to play the role that was made famous by veteran actor Robbie Coltrane in the original film series, before his death in 2022. Nick captioned his post: 'You're a wizard, Harry!!! 'Thank you for trusting me with such a loyal, gentle and courageous half-giant like Rubeus Hagrid. Robbie, I promise I won't let you down.' Elsewhere, critics of the Harry Potter author criticised her role as an executive producer on the show because of her views on transgender issues. HBO chiefs later defended her role, saying Rowling had a 'right to express her personal views'. In a move that's sent shockwaves of excitement across the fandom, Hollywood heavyweight John Lithgow has been announced as the new Albus Dumbledore. Janet McTeer, known for her powerhouse performances on stage and screen, will step into the sharp heels of Professor McGonagall, while rising star Paapa Essiedu takes on the darker, more complicated role of Severus Snape – a part made famous by the late Alan Rickman. The casting, which was officially announced earlier this month, forms part of HBO's hotly anticipated reboot of J.K. Rowling 's seven-book series – a full-scale, decade-long adaptation that promises to stick far more closely to the original storylines than the blockbuster films. Fans say this could be the most exciting reboot yet, with many calling the casting 'perfectly magical' and praising the diverse, inclusive approach taken by producers. Showrunner and executive producer Francesca Gardiner said: 'We are happy to announce the casting of John Lithgow, Janet McTeer, Paapa Essiedu, Nick Frost, Luke Thallon and Paul Whitehouse to play Dumbledore, McGonagall, Snape, Hagrid, Quirrell and Filch.' Executive producer and director Mark Mylod added: 'We're delighted to have such extraordinary talent onboard, and we can't wait to see them bring these beloved characters to new life.' The new series is aims to 'lead a new generation of fandom' and hopes to recapture the beloved details Harry Potter fans have enjoyed for 25 years.
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Love Island: Harry Cooksley's mum says she's 'disowned' him after shock villa antics including jaw-dropping orgy admission and snog with Yasmin
Harry Cooksley's mum has joked she's 'disowned' him after his brutally honest remarks and questionable actions in the Love Island villa. The former footballer, 30, has turned heads with his eyebrow-raising comments and shocking antics, including admitting to a steamy orgy. It was previously revealed during a challenge how the hunk had slept with an entire women's football team. He was also dumped by Helena Ford, 29, when it was revealed how he had smooched Yasmin Pettet, 24. The Surrey native planted a kiss on Yasmin not once, but three times, which left Helena reeling and led to a fiery showdown. While viewers have been up in arms over his behaviour, Harry's mum also isn't best pleased. She appeared on Sunday's episode of spin-off show Aftersun, expressing her disdain for her son's antics. Maya Jama put it to her: 'Imagine he's just living his normal life, talking to the boys, you forget you've got cameras on you.' However, asked if she approves of his villa conduct, Harry's mum quipped: 'No! I've disowned him.' She continued: 'On more than one occasion. Harry who? Harry who? 'Oh my God, it just rolls off his tongue, I don't know. How can you forget the camera's on you?' Before entering the Love Island villa, Harry didn't rule out going the full way and having sex on the show. Speaking ahead of his arrival in Majorca, he said: 'Listen, it's not out of the question [that I'll have sex on TV]. 'If it feels right then I will - and I have briefed my mum as well. 'So yeah, if it feels right and it's the right time I'm definitely open to it.' Before entering the Love Island villa, Harry didn't rule out going the full way and having sex on the show Meanwhile, tonight's Love Island episode ended in chaos as a shock recoupling was announced by show bosses. Before the credits rolled, a text was sent, which read: 'Islanders, tonight there will be a recoupling in which the girls will choose which boy they want to couple up with.' A further text message said: 'Boys, please stand in front of the firepit.' The tension was palpable as the girls started to consider their options, while the boys nervously gathered.
