Oritse, formerly of JLS, now ‘OWS', spoke to Free Radio about: One Direction, a JLS reunion, going solo, being a judge on X Factor or The Voice and support from Jay Z and Kanye West.
On being asked to be a judge on X Factor or The Voice
If I was asked to be a judge I would be very honoured. I have set up my own company, Overthrow, last year. I’ve signed my own acts to that. One of my acts being A*M*E. In my own way I’ve got my own little X Factor hub developing with Overthrow! So if I was asked to be a judge on The Voice or X Factor, of course that was something I’d definitely probably do as I’d like to help other artists grow.
He didn’t plan to go solo originally
I didn’t originally plan, or didn’t know that I was going to do music solo. After JLS split I went into the studio and I continued to make music, I just couldn’t stay away from being creative for too long. It was my producers that said to me, ‘people are gonna want to hear this’ and I said ‘I don’t want anyone to know it’s me’! Naturally in the studio process, I came up with OWS, and if I put it out on SoundCloud under OWS, no-one’s going to know it’s me!
On making music as a solo artist
Being a founding member, you don’t want things to end. When it did end, I didn’t know that making music for myself would be quite therapeutic. I was able to get a lot of my chest. A lot of the music I write is from very personal experiences, and can sometimes very uncomfortable. I’m talking about really real things, people around me that experience different things as well. It was really refreshing actually, and I didn’t know it would be. I’ve really bee able to just let go musically, and just express myself.
On support from Jay Z and Kanye West
When I put the record on SoundCloud, we got a message from Kanye West’s label ‘Good Music’. They were like, we really love this, who are you, I wanna get in touch! They didn’t know I had any musical background at all. It was as if they were discovering a new artist for the first time. We thought they were lying, and that it wasn’t them, but it turned out it was them. Soon afterwards Kanye’s rapper Pusha T, who was on Justin Timberlake’s first single, got in touch, and they were like we wanna roll with you and collaborate with you. Soon after that it got through to Jay Z’s people’s ears, they leaked the record through Jay Z’s website Life + Times, and it’s been up up upwards from then!
On One Direction’s group dynamic changing after Zayn left
They’re really close, they’re very similar to us (JLS). So I know for a fact that they’re very close. They’re all very passionate about music, and what they do and they want to continue the journey. They’re so successful now, they don’t have to do anything. If they choose to continue to do this, it’s because they want to do it. It’s because they’re passionate about it. They don’t have to. They’re set for life! Three generations of their families are probably set for life! So this is a choice they’re making, and they love it, so that’s why they continue to do it.
On a JLS reunion
I always say, you never know what the future holds. Right now, everyone’s got their individual responsibilities and 4 different diaries. In the immediate future it’s highly unlikely, but you never know. At the end of the day we’re all still cool. We still work with each other in different ways and in different capacities, on different projects. Now’s the time to let everyone breathe individually.
