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As You Wish

Tip My Hat Feat. Aklesso

The day started off like any other. Little did I know, everything was about to change.

"Ground Zero" Feat. WxNDER y is the first official single from Illijam's debut album, "Ironic Bombs", available 09.09.16.

Ground Zero Feat. WxNDER y

Verse 1
I remember coming up kicking it kid in suburbia/
Coming home, too late, Momma never murdered us/
Never feeling lonely, ever with the homies/
Together endeavor I knew you'd never turn ghostly/
But what do I know? I can't say much/
Even rock solid bonds gets crushed, turns to dust/
You ever look someone you love dead in the eye?/
Believe they never leave you til they saying goodbye?/
I hope in no man, just God cuz it’s crazy/
Head spinning for years after one 180/
I let you in, and you burn the house down/
While tryna rebuild I put these walls all around me/

Prechorus

Some people stay, Some people go/
Some people change and some people don't/
Only met One who I know will not let me down/
Hoping the people who leave come around/

Hook
I don’t know what you are trying to hide/
All I know is you changed overnight/
I don’t see why things can’t stay the same/ (can you be the you I used to know?)
Somehow familiar becomes profoundly strange/ (how you so cold? we were so close)

Verse 2 - Adrian 
It's been a minute/
Wondering where you been at/
Been thinking about it/
Admit it I'm kinda wishin/
Wishin that things were different/ 
Difference is now you're long gone/ 
Gone away nowadays we don't talk long/ 
And I was there when you needed someone to call on/ 
Now you don't return calls maybe I was all wrong/
Thinking that things wouldn’t change but we fallin off long/
Time no see burned bridges hard to walk on/ 
Talk to me what's been going on I wanna hear/
I know 2016 has been a crazy year/ 
I'm still lookin out, don't know how you disappeared/ 
But when I say I care I swear that I'm being sincere/

Verse 3
I don't know what to make of it, were they real or they faking it?/
Got a funny feeling they couldn't tell you themselves/
I know if they were of us, they would have stayed with the brothers/
It's knocking the wind outta me, not being able to tell/
If you knew me in 08, you know me still now/
You don't change much once you find firm ground/
Were you an imposter, rocking prada my prodigal friend?/
I gotta keep walking in what I been taught; but I'm hoping I’ll see you again/

Bridge
I gotta keep moving so, friend I wish you well/
I can't wonder why you wander any longer; time will tell/
I'm letting go, and holding on to you/
So many people leave, but I know you never do/

Outro
Sink not in darkness nor despair/
Bear not what your’s is not to bear/
When you have loved and lost, then trust/
The ways of God are always just/

Changed Feat. Adrian Stresow

The Walls - Illijam Remix [Prod. Kevmo]

(Sampling "Walls" by The Rocket Summer)

Hook
I'll help you break the walls down (please never feel like you gotta pretend that you're okay)/
I'll help you break the walls down (Show you my scars, show me yours, Ima stay with you always/
And bust you out, and take you home/
Believe in me, you are not alone/
I'll help you break the walls down/

Verse 1
Looking back (so crazy): for 4 years I/
Was walking around my high school passing my bride/
From the hallways of Emmaus to that church aisle/
We were strangers then, now everyday I wake up to your smile/
I remember when we met up at Starbucks on Tilghman/
Both coming in with broken hearts baggage up to the ceiling/
I put on my best mask, feared you be scared of my cracks/
Didn't want to hurt you or be burned again,‘Am I moving too fast?’/
I'm not okay, and you don't gotta be either/
Feel like a shell of a man, but I'm walking with the healer/
We got pain, well let me help you carry it/
Mourn with you, show you His grace, and help you bury it/

Pre-Chorus
Baby never hold back what's on your mind/
What's in your past, these things take time/
I've been so loved flaws and all, I'll love you through it ain't a trauma that He can't balm/

Verse 2
I'm an open book, you read me? I'm see-through/
I love knowing your mind, love when you let me read you/
And you know Ima never leave you, I'm in this til we die/
Let's live the chapters He wrote for us and then baby let's fly/
Never fixate on the broken, just focus eyes on the fixer/
Reagan these walls I already got the elixir/
Ain’t it liberating how we don't gotta have it together/
All we need is Jesus and He will keep us forever/

Outro
Trust me give it a little bit of time and the walls come down/
You stay walking with the Father like Jericho round and round/
Baby I be I loving what we have and I'm never gonna leave it don't matter how it goes/
Just like Jesus loves His Bride’s wall’s down for sure yeah/

The Walls - Illijam Remix

The Town [Prod. Rey.Oh.Eight]

Illijam's final single of 2017 chronicles the story of a town terrorized by a ruthless, underground-dwelling monster who snatches each citizen down to their demise one-by-one.  One peculiar towns-person, however, refuses to believe he must resign himself to such a fate...

Personifying Death as a subterranean fiend who eventually drags each human down to the grave, Illijam illustrates the familiar though oft-suppressed reality of human mortality and earnestly calls all to believe in the One who "[has] the keys of Death and Hades" (Revelation 1:18).

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die. Do you believe this?” (John 11:25-26)

Lyrics
Verse 1
Whispers all over the town, ominous signs in the clouds/
Days keep growing shorter, deadbolt doors after sundown/
I heard a rumor a monster, ancient and under the ground/
Terrorizes everybody, one-by-one snatches them down/
Grab your torches and pitchforks, meet down by the graveyard/
Tell me how we gonna stop this; tell me how we gonna save our/
town; look around we’re standing in proof we can't win, he can't lose/
Undeterred by our determination, he takes where, who, & when he chooses/

Hook A
O, the city from up here/ 
I can see the whole city from up here/
So many lights, so many lives in the night/
Pray that I make it til morning’s light/
Hook B
Looking over my shoulder, I can feel the eyes on me/
Drums in the deep, I hear something down there calling/
I don't have a plan, all we do is run/
Catch me if you can...like I know you will/

Verse 2
I tried to rally the city, nobody met in the town square/
Someone yelled out of their window, “There’s no Hope; we all go down there”/
I said that I can’t accept that, this thing keeps stealing my people/
We mourn cuz we know this is wrong, I need the answer, good over evil/
Light up a light up a light up a lantern, we stepped into the night/
Walking deeper in the forest rather die than live a lie/
I heard hushed voices from forked tongues, the wind hisses you can't run/
Saw glowing eyes by the light of the moon, what if that's only half true?/

Bridge 
Its forever Autumn; that's why people always leaving/
Deep down we all know this is wrong; that’s why we grieving/
We under a curse, from the agony of birth , through the agony of death, we re-enter the Earth/
Well I stumbled upon a midnight assembly of people gathered around a fire/
They told me how someone had slain the monster: ironically He had to die/
And all who believe, even though they die, incredibly they will live/
The One whom they spoke had of rose from the dead with the keys of the grave in His grip/

Hook A Alt
I can see the whole city from up here/ (2x)
So many lights, so many lives in the night/
Pray for my people to see the light/

Hook B Alt
Looking over my shoulder, I can feel the eyes on me/
Drums in the deep, I hear something down there calling/
You must understand, death can't hold us down/
If we’re in His Hand; I don't have no fear/

Credits:
Produced by Rey.Oh.Eight
Sampled "Arsonist's Lullabye" by Hosier
Artwork by Nate Bowen
Engineered by Skyler Gibbons

The Town

Madness. A peculiar madness has infected all mankind, warping the heart and setting it aflame with an insane addiction to worthless, lethal lovers and a disastrous disdain for precious, life-giving realities.

And yet, astoundingly, we have no doubts. We are so certain of our ability to determine something’s worth, trading what we deem worthless for what we deem worthwhile, showing what we consider trash & what treasure. It is a tragic irony how our default disposition is to happily exchange what can heal & satisfy us for the fleeting highs that only further sicken, parch, & slay us.

It would depend who you ask, though. The vast majority would say Christianity is a laughable waste: “Obey & surrender your life to some god? Let your reality be shaped by what some ancient book of fairy tales says? Give up what feels so good? Forego what your heart is telling you? And all for nothing. Insanity — a fool’s trade.”

The Christian responds to this mindset with grieved compassion: “Will you not give up the passing pleasures of sin in exchange for the lasting pleasure of knowing your Creator & Savior? Will you white-knuckle clench what won’t last and can’t satisfy to your soul’s doom rather than repent, embrace Jesus, and live forever? That is insanity.”

And you can wake-up too late. The day will come when the trade we’ve habitually made our entire lives will be eternally final.

Jesus asks us, “What good is it to gain the world, if in the end you lose your soul?”

We all have a choice to make. 

But an ultimate mad exchange occurred once that made it possible for us to even have hope.

God Himself, seeing that humankind had wickedly rebelled against Him, looked down from Heaven. His justice demanded that evil be punished; His great love devised a way to redeem. Exchanging the power, pleasure, & privileges of being God in Heaven, Jesus Christ came down to enter into our troubled, painful world in the form of a human baby —still fully God, but now wrapped in human flesh. Though our Creator, He became like His creatures, experiencing all that we do in order to sympathize with us. And yet, very unlike us, He was perfect.  God planned to make a mad exchange: the eternal Hell & Death we deserved for our sins would be suffered by Jesus; the eternal Heaven & Life only He deserved would be gifted to us.  Our estrangement from God would be suffered by Jesus; reconciliation & Jesus’s sweet closeness with God would be gifted to us.The moral filthiness we possessed would be placed on Jesus; His moral perfection would be gifted to us. God the Father exchanged His precious Son Jesus to ransom sinners like us.

And all that remains for us now is to make the most logical exchange in the universe, with God’s help. By putting our faith in Jesus, who died & rose from the dead to accomplish salvation, we renounce everything and joyfully forsake all others for God. We count everything as loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus.


His mad exchange affords us the chance to make the only sane one.  Will we?

Another Day In Paradise [Prod. OnBeatMusic]

Summer Vibin [Prod. OnBeatMusic]

Why? [Prod. Rey.Oh.Eight]

Phili 3:8 [Prod. Wontel]

Never Trade You [Prod. Colson Kelly]

The Reason [Prod. OnBeatMusic]

(s)Insanity Feat. Flourish [Prod. Matt Wright, Andrew East, & Colson Kelly]

Changed Feat. Adrian Stresow [Prod. Adrian Stresow]

Lyrics: https://genius.com/Illijam-second-guessing-lyrics
Prod by Hayes

“The ❤️ is deceitful above all things and desperately sick...” Jeremiah 17:9

It’s common in our culture to conflate love with infatuation. We’re prone to romanticize the intoxicating, fleeting high of passion such that we justify jettisoning ourselves from someone when our fickle ♥️s change. This mindset caters to whims of discontent as though our emotions were law and our hearts were sages.

But real love consists of a committed covenant with another soul before God till death. It second guesses second guessing, knowing the heart is deceitful & desperately sick, but God and His plan for love is true. Don’t follow your heart. God is love. And by looking to Him, we can do the humanly impossible: give & have love that lasts. One time for all the couples who fight to stay together ☝🏻

What God has joined together let nobody, —not even ourselves— tear apart.

Second Guessing

Prod. by @beatsbyegomi

On Illijam's 2nd single of 2020, he vents to God about the frustrating cognitive dissonance of desiring to stay spiritually faithful but often struggling to be. Despite the fickleness of our human hearts, the Lord reassures us of his loyal love & promise to never walk out.

Never Walking Out

A Christian, drumline-junky from suburbia who married Hip-Hop.

New Album "The Mad Exchange" out now!

"Count It Loss"       Philippians 3:8       #CountItLoss

Illijam

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