Born Sammie Wooten and raised in the working middle-class Presidential Hills community, Osama Woo has been garnering attention for his rhymes since the early days of freestyling with friends around the green, pad-mounted transformer boxes in his neighborhood. He began taking his artform seriously when he was given a computer program that allowed him to record instrumental beats. For the past 10 years, Osama Woo has been on the brink of superstardom, recently realigning himself with local powerhouse independent label Mercenary Records. “I used to go down to the studio and hear them rap way back when the studio was inside (label CEO) T Hunt’s bedroom,” he recalls. “With my music, I’m taking the way the game is now and doing it another way. I’m doing it my way and changing the way the rap game is,” he contends. “Everybody wants to follow what everybody else is doing but not me. If you are different, your music will stand out more. That’s why I’ve always been the one to get attention for my music from whoever heard it.”