In addition to radio, playground, nightclub, school yard, and house party music, the 1970s created some of the hottest black film soundtracks ever recorded, with Isaac Hayes on Shaft, Curtis Mayfield on Superfly, James Brown on Black Caesar, Willie Hutch on The Mack, Bobby Womack on Across 110^th Street, Aretha Franklin on Sprakle, and a whole roster of Motown artists and musicians on the soundtracks of Cooley High, Lady Sings the Blues, Trouble Man, The Wiz and more.

This 1970s music climate in the city of Philadelphia influenced the 1980s and 90s music in new genres, including the dance and house music of Frankie Knuckles in Chicago, the gangster rap of Ice T and Too Short in California, the silky soul sounds of Anita Baker and DeBarge, as well as the neo-soul movement of DeAngelo, Maxwell, and Erykah Badu.

What does all of this Philadelphia-based music have to do with Omar Tyree and Hot Lava Entertainment? Just like with film, as a sponge of great storytelling, Tyree recognized early on that songs and instrumentals are stories too.

Tyree says, “I used to memorize, sing, and rap all of my favorite songs verbatim and in the actual voice of the artists, just like I did with the characters in film. I had this natural skill of mimicking voices and understanding the rhythm patterns of the music. So, when rap music really exploded in the 80s and 90s, I could tell where they were grabbing the samples from and how they chose to rock them.”

Tyree bought his own records as a kid with his allowance in the late 1970s with 45s and 33s of vinyl, and later bought audio cassettes tapes and CDs by the dozens.

“I started collecting all of these old-school compilation records, just like the DJs were doing, so I knew all of the music. And back in the 80s and 90s, different cities had different sounds, which created more versatility to listen to,” Tyree explains. “Then I started writing poetry to moody jazz beats after graduating from Howard, and that was it, songwriting became easy.”

By that time, in the early 1990s, Tyree was already headed into a lucrative career of book writing. “Although I could produce and write music, I never pursued it like that initially, it was just a fun and creative outlet for more storytelling.”

Tyree produced his first records as early as 1995 (Cool Tyy & Manny Rize ~ The Old Days) with a rap, soul, and poetry album in 2002 (The Urban Griot – Rising Up), and a book soundtrack album in 2004 (The Urban Griot ~ Cold Blooded).