For the purposes of this entry, I'm gonna go ahead and treat OTEP as if its only member is Otep Shamaya. I realize that it's Otep Shamaya and a bunch of other folks functioning as a band and all, but are those other members big dykes? No, they are not.
So, a little personal information on how I happened across OTEP. I work an odd shift as a web nerd and most of my night is just me hanging out by myself in a large office doing web geekery. However, part of my night is me hanging out in a bullpen-style office with some really loud co-workers. I'm not especially social when I'm trying to do my nerd stuff, so the solution is to combine headphones with some insanely loud music.
One day, OTEP came up on Pandora, and I really liked it for its co-worker-drowning-out properties. I made myself a long, tasty SeeqPod playlist of OTEP and thus, a musical crush was born.
I passed along my interest in OTEP to The Housemate's Boyfriend, who is a big fan of metal and hardcore and anything screamy/loud. In fact, he's the dude who turned me on to Walls of Jericho, who were the seed band in the Pandora playlist that gave me OTEP.
We had a conversation:
Me: ... and they have a chick singer. She totally sounds like a dude!
HB [who is, in fact, Egyptian] : Otep? Is she Egyptian?
Me: Nope, I think she's just a boring white girl who has a cool name.
From reading Otep Shamaya's Wikipedia entry, I'd say that's probably true.
Aside from being notorious for her style of confessional writing, little else is known about Otep Shamaya's personal life and background. She grew up in a near ghetto area of L.A. Personal details such as her age are unknown to the general public. To interviewers, she has given her age as "five lifetimes old." It has been said her birthdate is Nov. 7, 1979. Though some have speculated otherwise, she insists that the name on her birth certificate is Otep. Though she has never directly confirmed such, in many of her songs and poems she has alluded to having had a tumultuous and traumatic childhood riddled with abuse, (both physical and emotional). However in an interview on AfterEllen.com she has confirmed that she is, in fact, an out lesbian.
"Five lifetimes old." Pardon me while I snicker, okay? My fun guess is that she's really the wayward daughter of some Mt. Holyoke English professors and that her real name is, like, Melissa Higgenbottom. Still, it's fun, angry, loud music.
Go love it. Or hate it. But wear the noise-canceling headphones while you do it, a'ight?
