After listening to YAHYA's new Made It Out Of Purgatory EP, you'll need to take some time to digest its meaning. It has also happened to us after playing the five tracks that make up this project, in which emotions are on the surface and the attempts to get out of a destructive cycle that emanates from each song will not leave you indifferent. The New York City-based alternative rap artist and musician tries to escape the self-induced nightmarish “dream life” where all is seemingly good in a release in which he does not hide at all and faces reality with determination.
If we delve into the chapters of life from which the artist is fleeing, it may seem everything is fine at first glance. Nothing to do with reality. That fictitious idea is the result of his direct choice to ignore his own pain, emotions and feelings in a bid to please others and do exactly what they expect from him, regardless of the damage it is causing Yahya. It may sound hurtful, but the artist is willing to get out of that painful loop and start healing the wounds through music.
“The overall theme of the story is released and growth and the next album this EP leads us into will be the full exploration of this release of the old, and growth into the new with full confidence and faith that this is all meant for me, but it starts here on this project,” he answers when we ask him about Made It Out Of Purgatory. He’s not afraid to face his thought patterns, or who he was allowing himself to be in his moments of weakness. “It is also about coming to understand that to move forward, you must first be still, and within that stillness, you can really slow the life around you right down, so you can see everything you were meant to attain from a certain space.”
“The overall theme of the story is released and growth and the next album this EP leads us into will be the full exploration of this release of the old, and growth into the new with full confidence and faith that this is all meant for me, but it starts here on this project,” he answers when we ask him about Made It Out Of Purgatory. He’s not afraid to face his thought patterns, or who he was allowing himself to be in his moments of weakness. “It is also about coming to understand that to move forward, you must first be still, and within that stillness, you can really slow the life around you right down, so you can see everything you were meant to attain from a certain space.”