Mighty Om is a rapper, visual artist and jazz musician from Baltimore, Maryland.
Download the Mighty Om’s new mixtape: Grind Daily [Will Parrish Prequel]
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With production from Afro DZ ak and Gnotes, the upcoming Gnawledge debut album from the Mighty Om brings together jazz, Eastern spirituality, and gritty street lyricism.
Mighty Om was born Will Parrish in Mississippi before moving to Baltimore at a young age. Parrish traveled to Spain to study economics in Granada, where he connected with Gnawledge artists Canyon Cody and Gnotes, who were producing Granada Doaba, a flamenco hip-hop collaboration album recorded with funding from a Fulbright Scholar research grant.
“Before making music I had been a visual artist, so it was natural for me to take a song and illustrate it verse by verse.”
For most musicians creation stops when the music is recorded. This project, however, took a unique twist. Mighty Om decided to illustrate his music. “I created the album to speak to people around the world, but I realized that the music needed something special. After reviewing the album I realized what that something was… I needed to turn the lyrics into pictures. That way a person’s native language would not be a barrier to understanding.” The result was “Guru and the Gangster”, a music video illustrated by Mighty Om.
Having studied jazz piano at Peabody Preparatory under Charles Covington, William was a perfect match for Gnawledge Records, where he joins multi-instrumentalist rappers Gnotes, Afro DZ ak, Elemental Zazen, Kaya and Mandeep Sethi.
