Omari Hardwick is a man of many talents, and it just so happens we might get a glimpse at one of them that we don’t get to see too often. Personally, I was sold after his scene with Gabby Union on Being Mary Jane where they got it popping in her foyer. At that point dude could make paper airplanes and I’d applaud, but I digress. It turns out in addition to giving us some more of his character “Ghost” when new episodes of Power return on June 25, Hardwick has also been hitting up the music studio.
EBONY reports that fans of TV One’s Verses and Flow may already be familiar with the poetic stylings of Mr. Hardwick as the actor serves as host and performed pieces of his own on many occasions. It now appears the 43-year-old actor is working on a full-length project entitled Later Decatur.
Hardwick teamed up with singer-songwriter Josiah Bell earlier this year for “Bloodshed”, a mournful piece on horrific happenings domestically and abroad, which helped his cope with his own sense of loss. In an interview with VIBE he was clear about the fact that poetry is his calling and not rap:
“As a poet, I would always hear emcees come up to me and say, ‘Yo, you should rap,’ and I was like, ‘No.’ You know, the label was tough for me.’”
“I’m a poet. I was proud of that distinction between the two, not wanting to be the other. So, I think just in terms of what God’s call for me was, I think I was to pop in a world of visibility as an actor prior to audibility as a musician…People were seeing me enough that they might listen to something I had to say even if they didn’t necessarily receive it. They’d at least give it a shot.”
No word on when the album will drop but it’s definitely being worked on. Even better? The project will be produced by some pretty heavy hitters in the music industry including R&B singer Eric Roberson, singer-songwriter Raphael Saadiq, and jazz musician, Robert Glasper. The men have worked with artists like Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, Common and Stevie Wonder to name a few.
Looks like Hardwick has all the right pieces in place and we hope he shares more of his hidden talent with us soon. You can take a look at part of the creative process he chose to post to Instagram below:
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