Amber Ojeda

Today’s artist isn’t just a musician, but she’s also one of the many lesser known faces you may have seen in a lot of random places on TV or in movies. She has played “Cat in the Hat Raver” on Veronica Mars, appeared as herself on Dress My Nest, and done several commercials. Those are just a few of the various small projects she’s participated in. But I’m not here to talk about those bit parts. I’m here to let you know that Amber Ojeda has ventured into the world of hip-hop.

All of her promo material suggests that “her ability to fuse Hip Hop R&B and Jazz is what makes her songs a stand out among music lover.” I had to use a direct quotation just because that particular statement was so horribly written that it’s painfully hilarious to anyone with even a semi-decent grasp of the English language. Anyway, there’s no doubt that Ojeda has a beautiful voice and that her music is entertaining, but her stuff pretty much sounds like any other contemporary hip-hop or R&B song out there. It doesn’t really “stand out” and you can pretty much throw out the jazz element in that description of her music. I think that genre is just mixed into a lot of promo material to make the artist seem that much more talented, meaning that jazz is typically considered a more classy, complex style of music and to add it to an artist’s resume gives them more prestige. Even if artists tend to be associated with jazz a little too liberally, to say that a lot of them, if not all of them, have been influenced by it is inarguable. You can hear the influence of jazz vocal stylings in Ojeda’s voice just as you can hear it in the voices of many other contemporary R&B songstresses.

But to reaffirm my stance, I have nothing against Amber Ojeda’s music. It’s what I would consider light entertainment; her songs are fun, pretty, and catchy. And even though they sound like all the other contemporary hip-hop/R&B songs you might hear on the radio, I don’t think there’s anything particularly wrong with that. I said it before and I’ll say it again: formulaic music is fine so long as you follow the right formula. Ojeda and whatever producers and musicians that back her up use the right recipes, which results in simple, enjoyable music.

I suppose the only song of hers that seems to stray away from the standard is “Love from the Band,” which has a repeated piano part and jazzy drum loops that tend to be piled on top of each other. It also has little to no bass, which is highly unusual for modern R&B and hip-hop. It’s intriguingly different.

There’s no album for sale this time, at least as far as I know, but you can purchase songs by Amber Ojeda at her MySpace page.

Amber Ojeda – Love from the Band
Amber Ojeda – All I Need (Money Mix)