The Oddball Allstars, No Boundaries

Common Chords By Randall Hill

The Oddball Allstars

Akeem Jamaal Cheatham and Tai Uv took two different journeys in life and ended up on the same road. The music they create in their duo The Oddball Allstars reflects their diversity in culture and desire to have no boundaries with music.

“It think it’s cool how it all came together,” said Uv, a first-generation American whose parents fled communist Vietnam before he was born. “We’re coming from two different worlds and mashing it together to see what we can make from it.”

Cheatham, who goes by the performance name “JSneez”, is clad in a solid black hoodie with “Myrtle Beach” across the front in white letters.

“I like Frank Sinatra and Kurt Cobain, I love all types of music but I didn’t feel right doing it. I wasn’t that color,” he said. “I wasn’t white. In high school they called me the white/black kid, cause I was listening to so many styles of music.”

The two met in 2004 as students at Socastee High School but didn’t start performing together until 2007 when Uv was attending USC in Columbia.

“He was in the same boat I was in cause he was Asian and listening to hip hop,” JSneez said. “His culture was saying, ‘What you listening to that music for?’”

They used their detachment from their cultures as a springboard to expression. They started to experiment by combining their musical styles and finding the best of both worlds.

“It was our way of not getting judged by anyone else,” said JSneez.

“It’s like I throw everything in a bowl in my head and mash it all around,” said Uv. “It’s like a big salad of different styles of music.”

The Allstars will leave no story untold if it will make for a good song.

One song entitled “No Oregano” is about the plight of a less-than-honest drug dealer while another “What I Can Do” reflects the songwriters’ belief in freedom of choice and personal goals.

The music reflects their unique take on real life.

“It made perfect sense I guess, being oddballs,” said JSneez about how their music reflects real life. “We’re different and that’s how we got the name. People can’t believe a person can be more than one thing.”

Randall Hill

Watch this music only video of the Oddball Allstars song: What I Can Do.

Watch this music only video of the Oddball Allstars song: No Oregano.

Watch this music only video of the Oddball Allstars song: In The Wild.