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<p>&nbsp;like to go where things are uncomfortable, or complex,&rdquo; says Omar Apollo. &ldquo;Making music isn&rsquo;t easy. That&rsquo;s why I&rsquo;ve dedicated a lot of my life to it.&rdquo; It&rsquo;s also why the 26-year-old musician hasn&rsquo;t taken much of a break since releasing his debut album, <em>Ivory,</em> in 2022. A lush blend of R&amp;B and hip-hop along with Latin trap and Mexican corridos, <em>Ivory </em>revealed Apollo&rsquo;s chameleonic versatility and earned the singer-songwriter his first Grammy nomination for Best New Artist. Not long after, he left his home base of LA to open for SZA on the North American leg of her arena&nbsp;<em>SOS</em> tour. &ldquo;It&rsquo;s not my show, so I was kind of scared of how the crowds would react,&rdquo; he says. But &ldquo;seeing people&rsquo;s expressions, it &rsquo;s huge.&rdquo; In October, Apollo released <em>Live for Me,</em> a sparse and raw EP that was, in a way, an exercise in further discomfort. (One of the EP&rsquo;s tracks, &ldquo;Ice Slippin,&rdquo; is about the winter he came out to his family.) &ldquo;Those songs helped me find where I was going,&rdquo; he says. And this year, there is new music on the way.</p>
<p>The son of working-class Mexican immigrants from Guadalajara, the singer (born Omar Apolonio Velasco in 1997) grew up in Hobart, Indiana, where he first taught himself to play the guitar. &ldquo;Music gave me a feeling, a sparkle,&rdquo; he says. After gaining traction on SoundCloud, Apollo was signed to Artists Without A Label in 2017 (he later switched to Warner), and quickly ensnared in a cycle of releases and tours. &ldquo;I wasn&rsquo;t really thinking about it,&rdquo; he says, looking back. &ldquo;My brain was just on autopilot.&rdquo; He recorded one whole version of <em>Ivory, </em>then scrapped it and started over. &ldquo;I had to discover myself,&rdquo; he says.</p>
<p>That sense of clarity is crucial for Apollo, who values his instincts. Last summer, that meant leaving LA for London, where he set up shop in Little Venice, a quaint neighborhood named for its canals. &ldquo;It was a little too quiet,&rdquo; he jokes. The neighbors slipped him notes outlining their objections to the volume of Apollo&rsquo;s speakers. In between recording, he&rsquo;d invite friends on bike rides through its many parks.</p>
<p>Aside from the occasional noise complaint, the cloudy skies of London&mdash;a contrast to sunny LA&mdash;suited him. Apollo says he has&nbsp;always been drawn to subjects that are hard to grasp, rather than those that feel concrete or bright. (He is clearly aware of wider world issues: When we speak in early January, he&rsquo;s just wrapped up a benefit concert for humanitarian aid in Sudan and Gaza.) &ldquo;I&rsquo;ve talked to my therapist about it, but I really like being in a different place.&rdquo; In this case, dislocation added perhaps an even greater force to his new work. &ldquo;I get kind of lost in the process of making music,&rdquo; he acknowledges. &ldquo;I&rsquo;m surfacing emotions, and I&rsquo;m not zoomed out. But later, I am like, Wow, I really wrote this from my soul. I felt this really deeply."</p>
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