Omer Fedi

Omer Fedi (born March 25, 2000, in Tel Aviv, Israel) is an Israeli-born, Los Angeles-based guitarist, record producer and songwriter whose guitar-driven hooks sit underneath some of the biggest pop and pop-punk records of the 2020s, from Machine Gun Kelly’s Tickets to My Downfall to Lil Nas X’s “MONTERO (Call Me by Your Name),” The Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber’s “Stay,” Sam Smith and Kim Petras’s “Unholy,” and Rosé and Bruno Mars’s “APT.” A jazz-trained guitarist who moved from Tel Aviv to Los Angeles at 16, Fedi has built a career on live-instrument hooks layered into pop and hip-hop records, a style Variety credited with helping trigger a wider 2000s pop-punk revival. He remains, by his own repeated description, uninterested in a solo artist career, calling himself “more of a behind-the-scenes type.”

Early Life and the Move to Los Angeles

Omer Fedi was born March 25, 2000, in Tel Aviv, Israel, to Jewish parents, and has two brothers, Guy and Ben. His father, Asher Fedi (1970–2025), was a widely respected Israeli session and touring drummer who spent 25 years working with Israeli stars such as Shlomo Artzi and Shalom Hanoch; MTV News described the elder Fedi as “one of the most accomplished and well-respected drummers in Israel,” and Omer has called him “the biggest drummer ever in Israel” in an interview with Billboard. Asher passed away in 2025.

Asher taught Omer drums from a young age, but at 10 Omer switched his focus to guitar, a decision he has attributed in part to Drake Bell’s guitar-playing character on Nickelodeon’s Drake & Josh, and, more jokingly, to a belief that “guitar players get more girls than drummers.” At 16, Fedi and his father relocated from Tel Aviv to Los Angeles in search of greater musical opportunity. “In Israel, there’s a limit to how far you can progress in music, but here, nothing can hold me back,” he told Variety. He has said that before the move he could barely speak English and was failing the subject in school, going in with the attitude, “I’m going to meet a musician somehow, and we’ll figure it out.”

Fedi enrolled at Calabasas High School and joined its jazz ensemble, where a clinician working with the group said he “could speak through the instrument.” In 2018 he won the “Outstanding Performer” award at the Reno Jazz Festival, beating out a field of more than 9,000 young musicians. His jazz training, and an ear shaped by listening to Steely Dan’s Walter Becker and Donald Fagen alongside guitarists Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page, John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and The Strokes, would later become the technical backbone of his pop songwriting.

The Come-Up: Sam Hook, iann dior and 24kGoldn

Fedi’s professional break came through Sam Hook, a well-connected songwriter he met while still a student at Calabasas High. “I had never produced or written a song, but we just started writing together, and soon I’d go to his house every day after school,” Fedi has said. Hook was, in Fedi’s account, the first person to tell him he was more than a guitarist, that he needed to produce and write songs, and Hook introduced him to figures including superproducer Andrew Watt. Working alongside Hook, Fedi landed a co-write on Ella Mai’s 2018 single “Naked,” later certified 2x Platinum and part of the Grammy-nominated (Best R&B Album) self-titled Ella Mai, giving Fedi his first Grammy nomination before he had turned 19.

The relationship that proved foundational to his rise was with iann dior. Fedi began working with him as early as 2019, contributing to tracks including “18,” “Never Is Enough,” “In Too Deep” and “Stay for a While,” then deepening into 2020 with “Sick and Tired” (featuring Machine Gun Kelly and Travis Barker), “Paradise,” “Sickness,” “Psycho” and the gold-certified “Holding On.” It was this iann dior orbit that connected Fedi to his most important long-term collaborators: he met 24kGoldn at a party and the two started writing together within a week, and around the same period he crossed paths with producer Keegan Bach (K-Beazy) and songwriter-producer Blake Slatkin during a 24kGoldn session that produced “3, 2, 1.”

That same circle, iann dior, 24kGoldn, K-Beazy and Slatkin, built “Mood,” released July 24, 2020, around a guitar riff Fedi wrote and insisted on repeating “throughout the entire track” rather than letting it fade the way most pop hooks do. “We aimed for an early 2000s sound but with a faster tempo,” Fedi told Variety. The bet paid off: “Mood” hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and stayed on the chart for 33 weeks, becoming Fedi’s first signature smash and winning him and iann dior Song of the Year at the 2022 BMI Pop Awards, with Fedi tying Michael Pollack for Songwriter of the Year.

Fedi’s collaboration with Machine Gun Kelly began even earlier, through the guitar work he contributed to the 2019 album Hotel Diablo, and deepened during MGK’s March 2020 COVID-19 “Lockdown Sessions,” where the two performed acoustic covers of Paramore’s “Misery Business” and John Mayer’s “Waiting on the World to Change.” That informal, guitar-driven session work became the connective tissue leading directly into MGK’s full pivot to pop-punk on Tickets to My Downfall.

Fedi has also taken credit for discovering The Kid LAROI. “I stumbled upon him on SoundCloud one day, and he had this track called ‘Bless’ that released when [he] was just 14. I DM’d him, but at the time, neither of us had many followers, so I didn’t get a response initially,” Fedi told Variety. They eventually connected, and when LAROI arrived in Los Angeles, “we created the song ‘Go’ when we first met.” Fedi has called LAROI “one of my closest friends.” Throughout, Fedi has described a deliberate philosophy of collaborating only with friends rather than strangers assigned by a publisher. When Universal Music Publishing Group tried to pair him with unfamiliar co-writers, he told them: “No, I’ll stick to collaborating with my friends, thanks.”

The Blake Slatkin Partnership

Blake Slatkin (born October 16, 1997), an American record producer and former NYU student who had already worked with Gracie Abrams and Omar Apollo, became Fedi’s most consistent, longest-running creative partner. The two met a week before COVID-19 lockdowns began, during the 24kGoldn session that produced “3, 2, 1.” Slatkin later recalled, “I felt like I had been searching for people who understood and were excited about music in a way that I thought about it… It was like a light bulb went off.”

Together, Fedi and Slatkin co-wrote and co-produced a run of era-defining hits: “Mood” (24kGoldn featuring iann dior), “Without You” (The Kid LAROI and Miley Cyrus), “Stay” (The Kid LAROI and Justin Bieber), “That’s What I Want” (Lil Nas X), and “Unholy” (Sam Smith and Kim Petras). Fedi is credited with introducing Slatkin to The Kid LAROI; the trio, joined by Charlie Puth and Cashmere Cat, wrote and produced “Stay” in an overnight session, with LAROI and Slatkin working in Los Angeles while FaceTiming Fedi, who was in New York at the time. Released in 2021, “Stay” hit No. 1 on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Billboard Global 200, spent seven weeks atop the Hot 100, set the record for most weeks at No. 1 in pop radio history, and was eventually certified 11x Platinum (Diamond).

In 2020, UMPG signed and began developing Fedi and Slatkin together as a pair, and the two continued working side by side through Sam Smith’s “Unholy,” spending roughly a week at Geejam Studios in Jamaica alongside Smith, Ilya Salmanzadeh, Cirkut and Jimmy Napes in a process Slatkin described as feeling “like a big party” given how well the collaborators knew each other. The partnership has continued through The Kid LAROI’s 2023 debut album The First Time (including “Bleed,” where Fedi is credited for production, songwriting, bass, drums, guitar, keyboards and programming) and into 2024’s “APT.” by Rosé and Bruno Mars, where both are again credited among the songwriting and production team.

Architect of the Pop-Punk Guitar Revival

MTV News has called Fedi, in essence, the architect behind pop’s new sound: “With a keen ear for crafting hooks and the technical training to execute them, no one is better suited to soundtrack the future.” Variety, naming him “Hitmaker of the Month” in April 2021, called him “the secret weapon” behind “Mood,” “Without You” and “Montero.”

What distinguishes Fedi from many of his production peers is that his musical identity is rooted in live rock guitar rather than programmed hip-hop beatmaking. That sensibility dovetailed precisely with Machine Gun Kelly and Travis Barker’s mission on 2020’s Tickets to My Downfall, an album explicitly built to revisit the “brash, catchy, energetic” blink-182 and Sum 41 sound of the early 2000s and, in the words of its makers, to “inspire a younger generation to learn guitar.” Fedi is credited on bass and guitar across the majority of the album’s tracks alongside songwriting and production, with individual song credits including “Forget Me Too” (Platinum), “Title Track” (Gold), “Body Bag” (Gold), the “Misery Business” cover (Gold), and “Can’t Look Back” (2x Platinum). He also appeared as an on-screen extra in MGK’s 49-minute companion film, Downfalls High. Travis Barker executive produced the album and played drums throughout; it debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 as part of a broader 2020s pop-punk revivalism that also carried Avril Lavigne’s comeback, My Chemical Romance’s resurgence and Jxdn’s rise. A production tutorial video analyzing “how to make pop punk beats for MGK & iann dior” names Fedi, alongside Travis Barker and Nick Mira, as one of the specific architects of that sound: repetitive, hook-forward guitar riffs layered over live-sounding drums rather than typical trap percussion.

Fedi has articulated his working philosophy in explicitly relational terms: “I don’t comprehend how you can create music with someone who isn’t a friend or a random person… If you don’t connect as people, even if both of you are exceptional musicians, the music won’t turn out well.” He has also described preferring to act as his own A&R, discovering and developing artists before they break, citing 24kGoldn and The Kid LAROI as examples, and has repeatedly declined to pursue a solo artist career of his own, describing himself as “more of a behind-the-scenes type” with “many songwriting goals to achieve.”

Discography and Major Credits

Fedi’s discography runs to hundreds of credits as a writer, producer and instrumentalist. Selected album-level work:

Other credits span Charli XCX (“360,” “B2B,” “365”), Rosé and Bruno Mars (“Number One Girl,” “Drinks or Coffee,” “Vampirehollie”), Avril Lavigne (“Bite Me”), Lizzo, Ava Max, Melanie Martinez, Trippie Redd, Madonna (via Sam Smith’s “Vulgar”), Jung Kook and Central Cee, Katseye and Le Sserafim. On the Montero cycle, Fedi went on to executive produce the full album and additionally co-wrote and co-produced “That’s What I Want” (No. 1, Billboard Pop Airplay), “Sun Goes Down” (Gold), “Am I Dreaming” (3x Platinum), “Star Walkin’” (5x Platinum) and, later, “J Christ” and “Where Do We Go Now?” (2024). Discography sources do not credit Fedi on Lil Nas X’s “Industry Baby,” a track generally attributed to Take a Daytrip and Kanye West among others; his involvement with the Montero era was extensive but did not extend to that particular single.

Awards and Nominations

Fedi has amassed a long run of Grammy nominations spanning three separate categories at the “Big Four” level, without, as of the most recent ceremony, a personal Grammy win in his own name, a gap he has embraced publicly with the self-deprecating nickname “Grammy-nominated loser.”

“Unholy”, which Fedi co-wrote and co-produced with Blake Slatkin, won the Grammy for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance at the 65th Annual Grammy Awards, a win credited to the song and its production team including Slatkin. SZA’s SOS, on which Fedi is a credited writer and producer, won the Grammy for Best Progressive R&B Album. Separately, Fedi was named to XXL Magazine’s “Best Hip-Hop Producers of 2020” list and won Variety’s Hitmaker of the Month recognition in both 2021 and 2022. At the 2026 Grammys, “APT.” ultimately did not win any of its three nominated categories: Record of the Year went to Kendrick Lamar and SZA’s “Luther,” and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance went to Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo for “Defying Gravity,” though co-writer Amy Allen won Songwriter of the Year, Non-Classical at the same ceremony. Rosé and Bruno Mars opened the February 1, 2026, Grammy telecast with a live performance of “APT.,” making Rosé the first solo K-pop artist to perform at the ceremony and to be nominated in the Grammys’ general-field categories.

Label, Publishing and Team

Fedi signed a global publishing deal with Universal Music Publishing Group in March 2020, with UMPG announcing: “We are thrilled to welcome Grammy-nominated producer, multi-instrumentalist and writer, Omer Fedi to the UMPG fam!” UMPG executive Lillia Parsa, appointed Senior Vice President of A&R in 2021, is credited with having signed and developed both Fedi and Blake Slatkin as a pair starting in 2020. UMPG also swept top honors tied to Fedi’s work at the 2022 BMI Pop Awards, winning Song of the Year for “Mood” and Songwriter of the Year for Fedi personally.

Fedi’s early career development ran through Electric Feel Entertainment, the Los Angeles talent incubator founded by Austin Rosen, described as having discovered and developed “some of the world’s most influential artists, producers and songwriters including Post Malone, Rich The Kid, Travis Scott, Louis Bell, Frank Dukes, Nick Mira, Andrew Watt, Billy Walsh, Brian Lee, 24KGOLDN, Iann Dior, Omer Fedi, Blake Slatkin and more.” Electric Feel operates its own publishing arm alongside its management wing, giving the company a full view spanning artist management, songwriter and producer representation, and publishing. Fedi has worked extensively out of Electric Feel’s studio facilities, alongside labelmates Post Malone, 24kGoldn, iann dior and Slatkin.

Fedi has cited Ron Perry, chairman and CEO of Columbia Records, home to both The Kid LAROI and 24kGoldn, as an important early champion. “I began to gain some traction [at] Columbia Records… Ron Perry, the chairman and CEO, was listening to my demos and appreciated what I was doing, which led him to introduce me to [Lil Nas X]… I have great respect for Ron; he’s one of the smartest individuals I’ve encountered,” Fedi told Variety. That same relationship later helped launch the recording career of Fedi’s then-partner Addison Rae: Perry, whom Rae knew through Fedi, met with her following her independent debut EP AR and signed her to Columbia Records in late 2023.

Personal Life

From 2021 to 2025, Fedi was in a widely reported relationship with TikTok star, actress and singer Addison Rae. The two sparked dating rumors in the summer of 2021, were spotted holding hands on a Los Angeles date that August, and went “Instagram official” the same month. The Kid LAROI, a close friend and frequent collaborator of Fedi’s, told Howard Stern that Rae and Fedi “probably” met through him. The couple made their red-carpet debut together at the 2022 Grammy Awards, where Fedi was himself a nominee.

In October 2025, Entertainment Tonight reported the couple had quietly split “a few months” earlier, after four years together, with a source saying “there’s no bad blood between them, and they still keep in touch,” and that Rae ended the relationship to focus on her music career following the June 2025 release of her debut album Addison. As of early 2026, Rae was reported to be single. Rae’s 2023 song “I Got It Bad,” from her EP AR, is widely reported to have been inspired by Fedi, though it was produced by Oscar Görres and Rami Yacoub rather than Fedi himself.

Recent Activity (2024–2026)

Fedi’s momentum accelerated through the 2024–2026 window. In 2024 he co-wrote and co-produced “APT.” by Rosé and Bruno Mars, which reached No. 1 on the Billboard Global 200 and became a defining global pop single, alongside further Rosé tracks from her rosie album era and additional credits on Charli XCX’s “360,” “B2B” and “365,” plus work with Katseye and Le Sserafim.

In 2025, Fedi co-composed and produced Renée Rapp’s “Mad” from her sophomore album Bite Me, received a Best Composer nomination at the Asian Pop Music Awards for “Number One Girl,” and was credited on Lil Nas X’s “Hotbox” from his Dreamboy rollout, alongside Take a Daytrip and Ojivolta. He is also documented as a producer on a 2025 Charli XCX-adjacent dance collaboration alongside Ilya, A.G. Cook and George Daniel. That same year, his father Asher Fedi passed away, and his four-year relationship with Addison Rae came to an end.

Into 2026, Fedi’s three “APT.” Grammy nominations, Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance, played out at the February 1 ceremony, where Rosé and Bruno Mars opened the telecast performing the song live. Fedi continues to be credited across new releases; a Spotify for Artists songwriter page shows a March 2026 writing credit on Sienna Spiro’s “The Visitor,” suggesting continued work with emerging artists even amid his A-list pop schedule.

Timeline

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Omer Fedi a rapper?

No. Fedi is a guitarist, record producer and songwriter. His contributions to hip-hop-adjacent and pop records are instrumental and production credits, built around live guitar hooks, not vocal or rap performances.

What is Omer Fedi's connection to Machine Gun Kelly?

Fedi played guitar on MGK’s 2019 album Hotel Diablo, then became a central architect of MGK’s 2020 pop-punk pivot on Tickets to My Downfall, contributing bass, guitar, songwriting and production across most of the album, which Travis Barker executive produced and played drums on. Fedi continued working with MGK on 2022’s Mainstream Sellout.

Has Omer Fedi won a Grammy?

As of the most recent ceremony covered here, Fedi has multiple Grammy nominations, including for “MONTERO (Call Me by Your Name),” Montero, SZA’s SOS, and “APT.,” but no personal win, a fact he has embraced with the self-deprecating nickname “Grammy-nominated loser.” Songs he co-wrote and co-produced, “Unholy” and SOS, have won Grammys as recordings.

Who is Blake Slatkin, and how did he and Fedi start working together?

Blake Slatkin is an American producer and songwriter Fedi met during a 24kGoldn session a week before COVID-19 lockdowns began in 2020. The two became each other’s most consistent collaborators, co-writing and co-producing “Mood,” “Stay,” “Without You,” “Unholy” and “APT.” together, and were signed and developed as a pair by UMPG starting in 2020.

Is Omer Fedi still dating Addison Rae?

No. The two dated from 2021 to 2025, splitting quietly a few months before the breakup was reported in October 2025. Sources described the split as amicable, driven by Rae’s focus on her music career, and said the two remained in touch.

Does Omer Fedi release music as a solo artist?

No. Fedi has repeatedly said he does not pursue a solo artist career, describing himself as “more of a behind-the-scenes type” focused on songwriting and production goals rather than performing under his own name.

What guitars does Omer Fedi play?

Fedi has been documented playing a 1963 Fender Stratocaster in Champagne finish and a 1960 Fender Stratocaster, both at Norman’s Rare Guitars in Los Angeles, alongside a Gibson ES-335, a humbucker-equipped Suhr Stratocaster used in live performances, a Gibson SJ-200 Standard acoustic-electric, a Fender CC-60SCE electro-acoustic, and a Fender Precision Bass visible in Machine Gun Kelly’s Lockdown Sessions footage.