A source at the label confirmed to the BV Buzz that the Sony imprint decided to drop the former B2K lead singer.

Omarion (real name: Omari Ishmael Grandberry) signed as a solo artist to Columbia Records after B2K broke up in December 2003. His boy band was actually signed to Sony’s Epic division.

The 23-year-old singer released two solo CDs for the record company, including 2005’s ‘O’ and 2006’s ’21.’ Both albums were certified gold.

In December of 2007, Omarion partnered with rapper Bow Wow on the CD, ‘Face Off.’ To date, the set has sold 341,137 units according to SoundScan.

No word on what the singer’s plans are for life after Columbia Records.

My source speculated that if former Sony executive David McPherson fills the late Ronnie Johnson’s job as Executive Vice President and head of Urban Music at Capitol Records, its likely Omarion could end up there. McPherson was influential in B2K’s success at Epic.

Another option could be Motown Records.

Omarion’s management and production company, The Ultimate Group (TUG) has a deal with that label and released Omarion’s good friend and business partner Marques Houston’s last two CDs through Motown.

Ouch. Having noted the poor performance of his solo albums as well as the atrocity of a joint album he dropped with Bow Wow, I can’t say this is surprising. IMO it was always a case of ‘when’. Not to be fatalistic, but finding success elsewhere is still going to be a tough feat for Omarion; after all, unlike some (*cough* Kelly Rowland *cough*) Columbia did a great job promoting Omarion’s releases as well as footing the bill for the top-notch producers enlisted on his albums. Yet, all of this, and he still flops. I’m thinking it has more to do with the domination of ‘that’ market by the likes of Chris Brown and Usher, leaving the pretty indistinctive Omarion without much of a chance. Anyway, good luck to him – he’s going to need it.

Then I’d have a situation where I’m not well promoted, and they really couldn’t facilitate that at the time. So it was a blessing. Part of me was like “Yeah!’’ and the other part was like “Dang!” But it is what it is.

AHHA: Before they went into bankruptcy, I’m sure you had a lot of meetings with them about the album and the release date. What reasons were they giving you about why the album had to keep getting pushed back?

Teedra: Our communication was just horrible. The person I was dealing with [from TVT] was Brian Leech. He was the A&R that came to the studio and listened to what you were doing. Through him I was able to communicate with the label.

I’m not the type of person that can easily sit in the midst of all the technical stuff. I try to stay away from all that so I can be creative and do what I do without the restraints of thinking about what [A&Rs] have to do. That’s why I have people around for those jobs.

So once Brian left, there was really no way to communicate with them as an artist. There was no music person there. There were a couple other A&Rs, but they used to be assistants. There was no music person to really communicate with that could understand the vision I had.

You have to have that person to translate the vision to the label. It was a hard situation because everything was in disarray, and after Brian left, everything just started to fall apart. There were a lot of people underneath Brian that left too, and it kinda fell apart, unfortunately.

AHHA: So are you a complete free agent at this point?

Teedra: Not exactly; I’m not off TVT yet, but it’s something I’m moving towards. It’s very, very near.

Q: Are you planning on leaving your record label?

A: Yes. I’ll be leaving Motown Universal some time next year.

Q: Do you plan on signing with another label?

A: I don’t really want to sign to another label. If you end up funding most of your projects, why not distribute your own product and make 100 percent of your profits?

This hardly comes as a surprise after the shambolic partnership she and the label have had to date; her one and only album for them ‘Liberation’ was shelved after a series of delays that spanned a year and a half. The independent route may work out for her; it’s been a success for the likes of Tamia and co. So Mya may just have a chance.

Patti Labelle

How has your label treated you?
Er, you probably don’t even want to ask me that right now. That’s how I feel abut it. I personally love some of the people that work here in the UK; my publicist Shoshanna and Simon… but I really don’t want to talk about it cos I want to keep it all positive, you feel me?

Well, it seems the album didn’t really perform as well as it should have?
Cos they’re not pushing it like they should.

Why aren’t they?
We want to release Crush, but they feel there’s a lot going on. This is my thing; I’m an artist and this is not rocket science. Take Control was going good, so we knew we had to schedule the video for Gotta Work. But you need money to do a video, and by the time we got it cleared, it was late. They didn’t feel like that, but anybody with half a brain could see it was late. So then Gotta Work was going up, but it peaked and rapidly started coming down, so we knew we needed to do Crush. They said ‘Wait.’ I love the business and I studied the business and I told them we needed to do the other video, because you need to have another single when your other track is peaking. They’re talking about doing it next year, but I’m not doing it next year! So I don’t know what to tell you. I get that everyone’s filled with good intentions, but the road to perdition is filled with good intentions. There should have been no gaps.

I’m kinda surprised (yet pleased) she was so open about the whole thing. I guess, one can only be dragged through the dirt for so long. It’s a shame too as ‘Because I Love It’ is a really solid record – one of my favourites from this year.