Hailing from Lacovia, St Elizabeth jamaica Blackwood endured a hardscrabble childhood growing up in Lacovia. He dropped out of school at age 14 and began to do music. He recorded a single on Garnet Silk’s label in 1995, and before he migrated to live in the USA in 2002, he voiced on the Artillery rhythm for Mario C Productions.   Fast forward several years, and Olaf finally landed major commercial success in 2017  with the Billboard-Charting hit , ‘I Need You’ that racked up an impressive 56 million streams in total on Spotify. The single, which  was produced by trance king Armin van Buuren and Fernando Garibay, who has worked with megastars like Bruno Mars, Lady Gaga, Sia, Shakira, Whitney Houston, and Britney Spears. The “I Need You” single was written by Olaf Blackwood and Fernando Garibay.  The “I Need You” Single reached platinum status in the Netherlands and it also won a BUMA award for the best International song of the year in the Netherlands. The single peaked at # 9 on the Billboard Dance/Airplay charts, and remained on the Billboard Dance/AirPlay top 40 chart for 3 months .   “The song was huge. It was was added to Spotify viral 50 Songs in 23 countries, and voted #5 on the bpm top 51 Songs of 2017 by Sirius xm. Contestants on “The Voice” performed a cover of “I Need You” during the 2017 finale.