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Who is Adam Oh? I can’t imagine you’ve heard of him just yet unless you spend any amount of time on a certain subsection of the shortform video app, TikTok. Adam Oh is a bridge between styles.
The young artist has quite the following on TikTok and has released a number of songs, using his success on TikTok to increase his music following. He currently has 17 songs on Spotify ready for streaming. His music can be described as primarily drawing inspiration from R&B music but incorporating much from rap and electronic music. Most of his music is in small, digestible chunks of approximately two minutes in length.
Adam Oh’s music is primarily about love, but not always the positive aspects of love. His music often takes a vulnerable turn on the traditional love song format. He’ll take a common trope of love songs such as calling a song “Worlds Apart” but making the song about how much he wishes that his partner in the song would just get the relationship over with rather than the traditional idea about being distant and coming together or being distant remaining distant but still together.
Musically, Adam Oh uses very similar types of sounds between tracks in his discography but that’s not necessarily a bad thing especially for a rapper. If someone is listening to a rapper, it can actually be a boon for the artist to not have varied musical ideas in the background because the similar backing become more like a white noise to let the words in the rap portion shine through. Again, Adam Oh utilizes lyrics based on love and different forms of love and when he does have little variation in the background music of his raps, he usually creates backing that accurately represent the identity of the form of love he is trying to represent.
Adam Oh is part of a trend of young music creators breaking into the rap scene that are from traditionally oppressed peoples. Adam Oh is a gay man breaking into rap which traditionally has not be kind to creators in the LGBT community. Of course, Adam Oh is not the only gay artist in rap. He has company in Lil Nas X, known primarily for his single “Old Town Road” as well as Tyler the Creator who is openly bisexual. Rap is not even the only genre that is experiencing surges of diversity. Country music is welcoming artists such as Orville Peck, Steve Grand and Shelly Fairchild in spaces that were traditionally reserved for heteronormative storytelling.
Adam Oh is also part of the pioneering generation that are using TikTok as a primary platform to create their music careers. This is very similar to many artists in the early days of Youtube such as Justin Bieber. Only the test of time will tell if these TikTok music creators will stick in the music world or if they will get lost in the rapidly evolving music scene. Adam Oh receives a B rating. Check him out!