A classically trained dancer, Olivia Dope has evolved into a fashion DJ mainstay

by industry staff photo by Andrew Fennell

With beginnings as a classically trained dancer, performing with names as big as Shaggy, Mac Miller, and Chris Brown, music has long been pivotal to Brooklyn-born Tamika Haywood, who adopted the stage name Olivia Dope in the wake of the ABC series Scandal’s character Olivia Pope. She found, however, her true calling as a DJ, using talents as a dancer and fashion designer to create a fusion of hip-hop, pop, electro, reggae, rock, R&B, and house that keeps, as she puts it, “the masses engaged, both musically and visually.”

Of Guyanese and West Indian decent, Dope, 30, was exposed in her youth to calypso, reggae, and soca (developed as an offshoot of kaiso and calypso, soca has influences from cadence, funk, and soul), her musical range was spiced by her dad’s extensive R&B collection.

Dope’s unique and multi-genre approach to DJing has caught the attention of clients like Jennifer Hudson, Rita Ora, Lil’ Kim, and Angela Simmons, celebrity designers The Blonds, Jones Magazine, and Russell Simmons’s RUSH Philanthropic Arts Foundation.

In the wake of her selection by Vibe magazine as “Vixen for the Day,” Dope explained that “…a vixen is fearless…never afraid to take a risk or a chance on the possibilities that life has to offer. The only way to fail is to quit, and people who “live Dope” don’t see failure, they only see the finish line and beyond.”

Olivia Dope
oliviadope.com