Bilal built up his reputation as a singer-songwriter and producer. Originally hailing from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, he has honed his craft as a soul singer since bursting onto the scene in 1999.
New York City was the stomping ground for Bilal Sayeed Oliver as he started to blossom on the scene. It wasn’t long before Aaron Comess from the Spin Doctors, in an after-school jam session, discovered him. Bilal took the opportunity to record a demo CD with Aaron Comess, which was sent to an A&R at Interscope Records. The label offered him a contract and sent him straight into the studio to record what would later become “1st Born Second”, which was released on July 17th 2001. The album was very well received in the charts with it making it to number 31 on the Billboard 200. To date, it has sold upwards of 319,000 copies.
Bilal would feature on various recordings over the next decade, whilst working on his sophomore release, which would be titled “Love for Sale”. It was an album that was slightly experimental, exploring new genres and showing a natural progression. Unfortunately, Interscope rejected the original idea, saying that it wasn’t commercial enough. If that wasn’t enough, most of the album was leaked online. He considered quitting music, but the album was downloaded upwards of 500,000, so he consequently embarked on a tour of the album. With almost a decade having gone by, Bilal came back with the album “Airtight’s Revenge” released on his own Plug Research Label. It was released on September 6th 2010, and peaked at number 21 on Billboard’s R&B chart.
With his career back on the rise, he toured and re-entered the studio a couple of years later to work on “A Love Surreal”. It was released on February 26th 2013, making it to number 17 in the Independent Albums Chart.
Sam Barber
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