'We never know who's first until we break away.'

After three and a half entire years, I'm honored to announce the release of 'Champion Plaque', a song with my friend and fellow genre-blender Ceschi Ramos. I had written the hook and my verse in early 2015, and then discussed it with Ceschi on my sofa in April 2015, the day after we played a show at Tacocracy, just a few months before it sadly closed. Download for FREE (enter $0)/pay-what-you-want on Bandcamp (https://abiyahmusic.bandcamp.com/album/champion-plaque-feat-ceschi), and also stream on Spotify, Apple Music, TIDAL, and other major digital streaming providers.

‘Champion Plaque’ can best be termed a psych, post-punk and reggae-influenced left-field battle rap with melodic undertones. It seeks to call attention to inauthentic people and situations with them in which we may sometimes find ourselves. Inauthenticity can manifest in a variety of forms: purposeful ethical lapses, dishonesty with ourselves and others, privilege, and shady music dealings, among others. 'Champion', in this context, does not relate to ego or self-righteousness; rather, it is an exhortation for all of us to be 'winners' by being our most genuine, honest, and ethical selves. 

The cover art, by Cincinnati-based illustrator/painter/muralist Derek Toebbe (Derek Toebbe Art) offers a strong visual representation of this theme. In it, he flips the idea of a wolf in sheep's clothing by presenting a sheep in wolf's clothing, as if to say that the world is pretty harsh, and people are pretty harsh, and sometimes we have to put up a hard exterior so we are not taken advantage of by the aforementioned inauthentic people; in reality, we can be peaceful and friendly, like a lamb. The laurel wreath, consisting of an olive branch and an oak branch, plays on the 'champion' connotation while, as the sheep's folded arms indicate, suggesting that authenticity requires that we not rest on our laurels. The olive and oak branches represent peace and strength, respectively, just like the lamb and the wolf. 

The original version of 'Champion Plaque' was produced by St. Petersburg, Russia-based producer Possible Address, the third song of Abiyah's for which he has done so in recent years. Because music unites when leaders divide. Bay Area-based MC/producer and homie OneWerd handled the remix duties, presenting a stark contrast to the original's slow-ride psych-tinged elements with an EDM club banger.

Download on Bandcamp

Champion Plaque Single

ChampionPlaque (OneWerd Remix)

Champion Plaque (Original)

"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