Centerville-native O’Shea the Wicked is digitally releasing his debut record, “Premature,” on Nov. 22. The release show will be on Nov. 29 at It Takes a Village Studios. Special guests Tennyson Love, Jeremy Street and Angel will also be performing.
O’Shea the Wicked is part of Dayton’s underground hip hop scene. While there are some prominent venues involved, such as Toxic Brew Company, Oregon Express and the Gulch Saloon in Yellow Springs, much of what constitutes the underground are the more unconventional house and basement shows, and an overarching DIY mentality.
The underground involves a lot of boots on the ground, homespun promotion, including, but not limited to: leafleting handmade flyers, small-run T-shirts, self-produced mixtapes (or duplicated CD-Rs or SoundCloud links), graffiti, the willingness to experiment and a blatant disregard for commercial algorithms in pursuit of truth.
It’s a new school informed by the old school. It’s the difference between lo-fi and overproduction, indie versus mainstream. It’s a pioneering movement.
“Hip hop has always been experimental,” O’Shea said. “The underground encompasses the outcasts. I see it with all of us. We all felt like the outcast in some way, shape or form. The underground is this unification of authenticity, and a willingness to put that first to connect with others through sound expressionism and abstract ideas.”
Many of the figures in the Dayton underground hip hop scene have played at antique stores, pizza joints, and smoke and comic shops. Locations that don’t typically have entertainment are often a top priority. Even the idea of playing in the woods has been tossed around.
Barring the the lead single from “Premature,” O’Shea the Wicked produced, mixed and mastered all of the tracks. He released three singles — “Crackle,” “King March” and “Napoleon’s Dynamite” — ahead of his debut album, two of which got the music video treatment from director Viktor Fantastik (another one of Son B’s alter egos).
The video for “Crackle” gets a Jordan Peele-esque slasher flick homage, with Fantastik/Son B/O’Shea the Wicked in a burned sweater, dragging his victims off-screen. The director, in whatever alter ego with which he’d prefer to identify, makes exceptional use of artificial and natural lighting to heighten the creepiness of the track’s beats, which digitally replicate the sound of crackling fire à la a trap version of Gershon Kingsley’s “Popcorn.”
The “King March” video premiered on Nov. 2 and prominently stars O’Shea, but in a more comedic role than the previous. O’Shea has also produced sketches, paired with the upcoming “Premature” release, which he subtitles “An Essay of Epic Proportions.” It’s a hip hop multimedia project built from the underground up.
He taught himself how to produce beats in high school, eventually putting music by the wayside to study film in college. After dropping out, he rediscovered his love for film and producing on his own terms; thus, O’Shea put his O’Shades back on.
“My whole life I’ve always created personalities or characters and alter egos for different situations or emotions I have,” O’Shea said. “When I put the mask on, it adds this other layer. It almost allows me to be more open with myself, and hopefully you can understand him through this other side, too.”
With sunglasses and a hat, and often a white button down and black tie, O’Shea the Wicked exercises a form of publicized escapism. The mask he puts on, not unlike an actor, allows him to step into other people’s shoes and traverse emotions that aren’t necessarily his own — but often are.
On “Premature,” O’Shea navigates his sentiments of adulthood through conversations he has with his younger self. He tells him to keep dreaming, and reminds him that not everyone is going to understand and that he can’t make them understand either.
“It’s about maturity, growing up and trying to learn what that is,” O’Shea said. “It’s this battle back and forth of me missing that kid, so I personified him.”
There is a dichotomy to the character of O’Shea the Wicked (a trichotomy or more, if we’re counting all of the alter egos). But if O’Shea is the more sensitive, personal side of the rapper, the Wicked part is ostensibly the opposite. He says there is darkness in beauty, and beauty in darkness: a theme thoroughly explored on the album and in O’Shea’s canon so far.
O’Shea the Wicked is a product of the hip hop underground, one that’s uninhibited by statutes of the mainstream. You may not be able to see his eyes, or know who he really is, but he can still see you. He wears a hat, but only because he wants to.
Brandon Berry writes about the local music scene in Dayton and Southwest Ohio. Have a story idea for him? Email branberry100@gmail.com.
How to go
What: O’Shea the Wicked album release, with Tennyson Love, Jeremy Street and Angel
When: 8 p.m., Nov. 29
Where: It Takes a Village Studios, 28 W. 5th St., Dayton
Cost: $5 pre-sale, $10 at the door
Tickets: eventbrite.com
About the Author