Colby O'Donis is everywhere. He's featured on Lady GaGa's recent No. 1 hit "Just Dance" and Akon's latest hit single, "Beautiful," along with Kardinal Offishall. But exactly who is Colby O'Donis aside from seemingly everyone's favorite guest vocalist?
O'Donis, in fact, is a recording artist in his own right who released his major-label debut album, Colby O,last fall on Akon's Kon Live label through Geffen/Interscope. The albumeven spawned the top 10 pop radio hit, "What You Got," featuringspecial guest, Akon. Here's the video clip for that track.
O'Donis isn't really a new kid on the block, despite the fact that he opened for the former teen idols, New Kids On The Block, and the New York Daily News oncepublished a profile of him using that phrase as a headline. The NewYork-born son of Puerto Rican parents has been performing since the ageof three when he won a talent competition. Later he hooked up with thesongwriting/production team Full Force, had a song included on the Stuart Little soundtrack, and signed a deal with Motown, although it later fell through.
Undaunted, O'Donis kept working, opening for such artists as Keyshia Cole, Montell Jordan, and Rihanna,before gaining the attention of Akon and ultimately signing to thestar's new label. "I met up with Akon about two-and-a-half years ago. Imet with him in the studio, we got together, and I played him my demo,and he was really feelin' it, he was lovin' the demo," O'Donis told DJBooth.net."And after that he said, 'Yo, I got this new label I'm startin' upsoon. It's called Konvict Muzik. It's gonna be real big, we're gonna bepartnering up with Interscope Records, and I want you to be one of myacts on the label.' And from there we kinda just ran with it. We werelike, 'Yeah, let's do it.' I was down. 'Cause when you looked at hiseyes you could just tell he had that determination that he wasn't gonnafail."
Here's another video by O'Donis, but unfortunately for Colby, this track only became a hit on Billboard's Latin Rhythm Airplay chart.
So after watching those videos and listening to O'Donis's solomaterial, I'm wondering if you think Colby is a star in his ownright--or if he'll just continue his run as everyone's favorite gueststar?