Most artists don’t get where they’re going in a straight line. They move around, they change, and somewhere along the way the voice shows up. With ALLTIMERR: The Horace Mann Project, Omari Alltimer stops and looks at the road behind him.
His previous record, ALLTIMER, was about family and what you give up to chase music. This one is more personal. It’s a thank-you to seventh grade at Horace Mann Middle School in Little Rock, Arkansas.
That’s where it started. Right before his family relocated to Texas, Omari figured out he could actually build a song: take whatever was in his head, put it on a beat, and hold down a verse. The album is a note to that kid, the one who stayed locked into hip-hop through every move and every change. Without him, there’s no father, no grown man, no artist.
Popalardo handles all the production, and the record sits in an odd, interesting spot. Omari describes it better than anyone: “This is that champagne glass with grape juice music, that you better be investing money music, that youth sports coach disgruntled parent music, that Black man’s plight music.” So you’ve got adult responsibility on one side and a refusal to quit dreaming on the other, and the album lives in the tension between them.
The sound moves from kid discovery to grown-up reflection through soul, jazz, and gritty, textured hip-hop. “Champagne Glass” opens things big, with glowing samples and confident verses. “Etrade” leans jazzy and “Little Man” is a more inward, soul-sampled cut, and both of them hit that mix of street smarts, money goals, and gratitude. Further in, “Pixies” has warm guitar running through it, and “Plight” rides rough, carefully chopped loops that show how sharp Alltimer’s control is. Then “Orange Juice” closes it out. It’s a soulful, victorious finish where the beat and the writing raise a glass to how far he’s come since Little Rock.
The path runs from Little Rock to The Woodlands, then Houston, Austin, and finally Los Angeles. You could call the album a nostalgia lap, but it works better as a personal, soulful record about where ambition starts and what it turns into. Alltimer pays respect to his roots by showing how much further he can take it.
