By Howard Campbell
LOS ANGELES – Coming off the most fruitful year in her career, Gambian singer Oumië hopes to make even bigger strides in 2023. She kicks off the year with Excuse Me, a pop song.
HAPA Award Winner
Last year, she won the HAPA Award for Best New Female Independent Artist with the song, How Deep. The sixth edition of that event — which honours top African performers of the year — took place October 28-30 at Belair Mansion in Los Angeles.
Oumië also gained traction with Bubble, a dancehall song featuring Jamaican singjay E-Dee.
“I won my first award and I’m so honored and grateful for the experience. I look forward to see what 2023 will bring, I have a few projects lined-up that I look forward to sharing with my fans,” she said. “In retrospect, I believe that I’m living the dream I once had as a little girl in Sweden to one day become an artist and share my art with the world.”
Excuse Me is produced by Huc, her longtime engineer who acted in a similar capacity for Bubble. According to Oumië, Excuse Me not only has a different feel, but its objective is to break her in wider markets.
“Each song introduces my music to a new fan base and Excuse Me has done that in particular. It is basically a song to all the exes. Sometimes in relationships we have to excuse ourselves, because if it is real love it will find it’s way back to you,” she said.
Although she was born in The Gambia, Oumië was raised in Stockholm, Sweden where her appreciation for diverse genres of music developed.
She remembers discovering reggae by listening to Shabba Ranks, Sean Paul and Inner Circle, as well as tuning into pop acts such as Hanson and Maroon 5.
Oumië launched her recording career after moving to Los Angeles 10 years ago.