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PHOTOGRAPHY EstevanOriol.com
INTERVIEW Elana McDermott

He was once best known as half of the chart-topping duo Lighter Shade of Brown. Today ODM gets to broadcast his talents daily on the radio airwaves on KISS FM. He’s quickly become a radio powerhouse thanks to his wide, loyal following. Never one to look back, ODM is ready to take on new challenges in the world of hip hop and beyond.

What type of cars do you prefer, sports or luxury?
Because I am known for getting speeding tickets, I try to stay away from the sports cars. They tend to get me in trouble. So I prefer the more luxurious cars because driving is more comfortable that way. I like to enjoy the scene and you can’t do that when you’re speeding at 150 miles an hour…

How about imports versus lowriders?
No disrespect to the import cars, but I’ve never really been big on those. That’s just really not my scene. I grew up more with lowriders, so I would say the old classic cars.

If you could drive any car in the world, what would it be?
I’d have to say, and this is funny because of what I just said, but…a Ferrari. [Laughs]

So if you owned a Ferrari Enzo, would you race it around a racetrack?
That’s it! I’d probably do a lot better than Eddie [Griffin] did. I wouldn’t wreck it! I’d keep it at a steady pace, at my pace.

What do you think is more important to a good music video: hot cars or hot girls?
Definitely hot girls. I would say you’ve gotta have both just to make your video stand out. Nowadays everything is candy-coated and rappers really are just overshadowed sometimes by all the bling, by all the cars, by all the girls. They come to town and they’re not recognizable. But I would say you gotta have the girls.

You are well known as being the founder of Lighter Shade of Brown, how did that come about and what’s going on with that now?
We started out it 1990, and we were put together through a mutual friend, actually our manager. We got together and basically, long story short, we started doing demos and within a year we landed our first deal with Quality Records. This was off of the hype of Mellow Man Ace and Kid Frost. They had dropped so we wanted to make the point of being the first Latin group out, opening up this movement for what we have today. We had a good run, a good 10 years touring and the name lives on, but now we are kind of at a standstill. As of right now we are not recording.

How did the name ODM come about?
I actually used to go by Little R; a lot of people don’t know that. You’ve got your first name and your “name” once you get a deal. Sometimes they want to change everything. They wanted something more appealing and ODM just stood out—One Dope Mexican. Me and my manager were just trying to come up with different names and he just kind of tossed it to me and I was like “okay, whatever.” I was just trying to get in the booth and rap. I just wanted to do my thing. The name really wasn’t important. Back in the days of Lighter Shade of Brown you couldn’t get anyone to name each of us as ODM or DTTX. It was always Robert and Bobby or the taller one and the smaller one. [Laughs]

What can we expect in the future from ODM?
It’s been a good run so far in radio. My future plan is TV. I’m trying to go full force with that, so you never know, you might actually catch me on the tube one day. You might catch me back in the studio working on solo projects as well. Music is still my passion, and always will be. Being an artist is my first love.

You can catch more of ODM at ODMmusic.com

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