Lockdown Gem

A brooding yet comforting experimental number about how the folks we’ve loved and cared about who have left this world taught us how to live through how they lived. Specifically, this song was written about Abiyah’s longtime friend and legendary avant-garde NYC beatboxer Kid Lucky, who passed in October 2020 from cancer.

Backing vocals by Abiyah and Beth Harris.

Lyrics:

feed me
your meaningless now shows
impact the killing from your mouth withhold
the kisses you miss my pointed slant and
decline the heat inside now cold
i might be
coming ‘round the bend
hands fold
gold not the only precious metal of sin
let’s begin in the place
where innocence belies the sensitive
i will remember
how to live
i will remember
how you lived
i will remember
how to live
i will remember
how you lived
…and how you gave

and you go high
and you go be fly
land in the silence of the street
flip tracks above and underneath
and your heartbeat beat beat beat beat beat boxed them out
and beat beat beat beat beat boxed them in

<but you know that>
picking up the pieces
ain’t so easy when your broken back is sleepless
<but you know that>
picking up the pieces
ain’t so easy when your broken back is sleepless
and you get slept on and on and on until you’re go-o-wone

but not forgotten where you stood
your presence known in neighborhood
and subway always know which way you want to go

and you hold the light
and we can’t decide
which part of us just died
when your voice left the mic
and you gave us life
but you gave us life

find time
it’s a fine time to rewind
your soul is getting light
and i can’t find my sight
lost in your memory
<and you gotta>
find time to remind
<and you gotta>
just how you felt inside
<and you gotta>
when you first went away
if you’re okay
then i’m okay
<you taught me>
how to live
<through>
how you lived
and how you gave
how you gave
how you gave
<you taught me>
how to live
<through>
how you lived
and how you gave
and how you gave
life.

From the full-length album Strangers Love Me (released December 8, 2023).
Production and instrumentation by Eugenius (Phillip Smith).
Words, vocals, and vocal arrangements by Abiyah (A. Rawers).
Mastering by Michael J. Collins @ Filthy Broke Recordings.
Recorded by Todd Uttley @ Fuzzy Eyed Studio.

Album cover art by Derek Toebbe.
Album cover and label design and layout by Steve Weinstein.
Album pressing by Solid Merch.

© 2023 Abiyah (Angela Rawers). All Rights Reserved.

How To Live

First demo living room take of new song Half Cigarette. The song has nothing to do directly with smoking.
133 bpm

Lyrics
oh when you came my way, i was lost in this disease, shackled at the knees
then you say my name, it melts my heart away, our romantic caberet 

they've beaten me with their cardinal sins, no false promises our new life begins, no more lonsome nights alone again, make peace with you and lay here

tied up all the loose split ends, felt like the movie would never end, let the fairy tail begin, then we can forget about it

we can leave the past behind us


Chorus
Let's put out those old flames
start that fire again 
this time we both win
take the chance while it's happening

We learn to walk again
this time hand in hand
I've got both to lend
and do away with all this canceling 


Verse

I cannot believe how they spoke to me and how they spoke of me with their boring ass chats
mistaken me for some other chap, enough to make you laugh
they said that they spotted me drunk again, they said I was hitting on all your friends, the goosip with them never seems to end I'm not the kind who's cheating
envy is not about winning in the end, their ignorance is never justified again, they said I was still good as friends but then I never knew them 
Now we're free to move beyond it

(we can leave the past behind us)

Chorus

Let's put out those old flames
start that fire again 
this time we both win
take the chance while it's happening

We learn to walk again
this time hand in hand
I've got both to lend
and do away with all this canceling 



Solo


Chorus
(we will live again)
Put out those old flames
start that fire again 
this time we both win
take the chance while it's happening

We learn to walk again
this time hand in hand
I've got both to lend
and do away with this canceling 

Put out those old flames
start that fire again 
this time we both win
and I cant believe this is happening
Let's take the chance while it's happening

We learn to walk again
this time hand in hand
I've got both to lend
and do away with this canceling

benson.caughtbetweenthetwisted.halfcigarette(v.1.0)

Jaguar Vivo Riddim

The Latest Track for the new Era in BYZAR

Dub Disco

These are tracks from the second Byzar Album, 13 years in the making....

Theoulustonyk

UrbanomadMix

It's not literally wishing death on someone, but it's that feeling you get when someone burned you and broke a promise or trust. Recorded in 2011.

The images associated with my profile may be subject to copyright law. I liberally invoke 'fair-use' of digital works. https://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf

benson.lebatonrouge.die

Night Storm

the day they tore down sudsy malones

Music for the death of the personal life.

Shanti's Solo Mix #4: La vie personnelle est morte

"Abiyah is the queen of all the mechanical parts of your heart. Her songs let you breathe underwater. She's the only thing your brain and your hips can agree on."
--Open Mike Eagle (LA-Mello Music Group/Hellfyre Club)

"Abiyah is the genuine article. A woman who is unique, talented and writes her own sh*t."
--louis logic (NYC-Fake Four Inc.)

"Asking Abiyah to give up her musical flights of fancy and pick one genre would be like asking a tigress to change her stripes. Forget it. Which Abiyah will be playing the festival? The chanteuse-over-DJ, the Punk priestess, the erudite MC or the avant-garde performance artist? Whichever, her music will be clever, danceable, sensual and confrontational." 
--Cincinnati CityBeat's MidPoint Band Guide - September 2005

Take a Soul Train dancer from 1974—one of them sistas who didn’t give a f*ck about cameras or Don Cornelius—well, if that sista made love to George Clinton and they had a baby girl and they let Patti Smith and Sister Carol raise that girl child in an embrace pre-dating same-sex marriage debates, that girl child woulda grown up to be Abiyah. By the early aughts, Cincinnati-based Abiyah hit upon a highly workable concoction: she fused her punk ethos with her love of Hip Hop, Dancehall, Dub, Alternative Rock and Spoken Word and racked up recorded collaborations and stage-to-the-page performances that resonate to this day—a poet published in the anthology Bum Rush the Page: A Def Poetry Jam (Three Rivers Press, 2001), Abiyah killed it on her impressive 2002 EP debut single “Free Wild Muse” produced by N8tiveSun, got all Grace Slick on 2004’s Coltrane Motion remix of her psychedelic cicada love song “Rise” and tweaked Bobby McFerrin’s notion of melodic vox on “Ring Around the Rosie,” an a capella/beatbox meditation recorded with Fairmount Girls’ Dana Hamblen and beatboxer Marty Spitfly.

A four-time CityBeat Cincinnati Entertainment Awards Hip Hop nominee and six-time MidPoint Music Festival veteran, Abiyah has performed at NYC’s Sidewalk Cafe with beatboxers Kid Lucky and Adam Matta, opened for avant-hip hop vanguards Mike Ladd and Beans, Brooklyn alt-rapper louis logic (Fake Four Inc.), Serengeti, Busdriver, Homeboy Sandman, Ceschi, and clipping., and, in 2011, appeared on LA art-rapper Open Mike Eagle’s second full-length offering “Rappers Will Die of Natural Causes.” She has also performed at the Vans Warped Tour on the Code of the Cutz hip hop stage, and is a well-known all-vinyl reggae DJ with Cincinnati- based Queen City Imperial Soundsystem. 

In March 2014, Abiyah embarked on her first tour, The First Ladies Tour, a two-week jaunt with then NYC-/now Oakland-based nu-R&B/hip hop singer Corina Corina. In October 2014, she performed at the first annual Louisville Outskirts Festival, a female-focused music festival, and also had the opportunity to perform for girl ages 10-18 as part of the Rockshops for Girls program associated with the festival. Abiyah is currently a member of the organizing and booking committees for Ladyfest Cincinnati 2015, and, in June 2015, she presented a strategy session, "Odd Woman Out: Being a Female Hip Hop Artist and Promoter," at the 2015 Allied Media Conference in Detroit. 

Abiyah is planning the release of the video for her noise rap song "Blup" (with Eugenius) in late July/early August 2015, as well as several other music projects this year, including a "duets" cassette EP, "Double Up," which will include Fake Four Inc. label head Ceschi Ramos, recording four already-written collaborative songs with Cincinnati art doom punk band Babe Rage, and a few solo EPs and single releases.

Recommended If You Like: Santigold, Open Mike Eagle, Dessa, Kraftwerk, MIA, Queen Latifah, Sister Carol

How To Live

Abiyah

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