Ookay

Ookay — real name Abraham Laguna — came up through the SoundCloud-and-trap boom of the early 2010s and never really stopped morphing. He first got heads turning with “Bouncer,” a 2014 team-up with Showtek released on Skink Records, and locked in his name for good the following year when Diplo tapped him to co-remix Avicii’s “You Make Me.” That same era saw his debut EP “Ghost” land on Dim Mak, the label that’s basically been his home base ever since.

The track most people still shout out is “Thief,” the 2016 single that cracked the top 30 of Billboard’s Dance/Electronic Digital Songs chart and became one of those festival-set staples you can pick out from three tents away. He followed it with the “Cocoon” EP, then kept branching out instead of chasing the same formula — “Chasing Colors” with Marshmello (featuring Noah Cyrus) and “Lighthouse” with Fox Stevenson on Monstercat both showed he wasn’t interested in being boxed in as just a trap guy. Full-length projects “Wow! Cool Album!” (2018) and “Very Special” (2022) doubled down on that refusal to sit still.

That restlessness is exactly what’s driving his latest chapter. Earlier this year Ookay dropped “type:era,” a three-track EP on Dim Mak that trades in some of the trap-era aggression for a moodier, mid-tempo future bass sound with real R&B and pop DNA running through it. “youshouldknow” with Casey Cook is warm and a little bittersweet, “getmehigh” with Rillø leans into darker late-night energy, and “dontwakemeup” with Veronica Bravo closes things out on an intimate, atmospheric note. In his own words, it’s “emotional, late-night, and really honest — like the beginning of the next chapter.” He’s been taking that sound on the road too, hitting stops like Denver, Boston, and Calgary and gearing up for an Ultra Music Festival set.

A decade-plus in, Ookay’s still one of the more unpredictable names in bass music — the guy who’ll give you a festival anthem one year and a late-night R&B-tinged mood piece the next, and somehow make both feel like the same artist just being honest about where his head’s at.