Abigail

Abigail Ashante

I blew up in music when I was 21 years old, with my music partner at the time. We were the first two females to pass three million views in drill music, so we made history and trended. 

Drill music originated in southside Chicago in 2011 depicting the areas challenging environment. So it’s often defined as blunt, violent, upbeat and dark and cold. It’s a male dominated genre in a male dominated industry. So the fact that females came on the drill beat was unexpected. And we were doing that. My songs talk about confidence. Themes like not relying on a man, females to be confident in themselves, confident in their skin. 

I want to be a voice for dark skinned people as I have experienced colourism throughout my life, from school into my adult life. It’s racism 100% and the darker you are the more ugly, you are perceived as. This word melanin is now circulating as being popular, but we need to understand the issue and that is that black is still viewed as a negative. I was bullied in primary school for being too dark, like charcoal they used to say. I started bleaching my skin when I was younger and it was painful. My mum found the cream and told me to stop and started giving positive affirmations every day about my colour. This helps when you have confidence issues caused by structural racism and colourism. 

I grew up here in Hackney with my mum and dad and brothers and I excelled in English at school. So writing my music was helped by that privilege and talent. At home we speak Twee first and English second. My family are from the Fanti and Ashanti tribes in Ghana. I was always a big afro-beat fan and this hopefully starts to blend into my music going forward. I was brought up with the Ghanaian community here in London. My mum used to take me to parties every Saturday and I am rich in heritage from West Africa. Ghana is currently one of the fastest growing economies in West Africa and the food and culture is something I talk about in my music. 

A topic I talk about through my music is sexual abuse. I lost my virginity when I was 12 and it was not through choice. You just freeze, basically. You just let them do what they want to do. I did not know what was happening to me and therefore how to say no. I wasn’t ready and I was too young but they continued regardless. When I was around 18 I started to hear about consent and this was when I realised what had happened to me was wrong. I was manipulated, being told that he loved me when he was raping me. It’s was a difficult thing to say. And I started panicking. When I think about it my heart starts beating really fast and I feel scared again. I was like, oh my god, I got raped. I just didn't know that's what it was at the time. I have PTSD, anxiety and flashbacks because of it, but over time, I have grown stronger and leant to deal with it. You can’t reverse it, only work your way through it and try to cope. I produced a song about it as part of my coming to terms with what happened. This is why our mental health is so important and talking about our depression and trauma is necessary. Many people are not aware of what’s causing their problems until they start talking about it. I'm gonna tell any female… if you're going through stuff too, keeping it in, makes it worse.

I feel better as a person and it helps my anxiety when I'm open with people. When I start shutting down and keeping myself to myself, I've become more anxious. So I'm all I'm all about this, and this is who I am, you know, this is what I do. And just being very upfront, and I think that helps us, you know, generally as females as well. Keeping everything locked down has not helped us in the past. It will stay in your mind. Yeah, you actually start thinking no one cares about you. And you think you're the only one it's ever happened to as well. Until you meet someone else with a similar story and you're like, oh, that happened to me too.