Born Bediako Bernice, Abena did a cool thing by adding Rockstar to make her name to make it standout.
“I am an artiste and I focus more on rap as a genre because I feel I gravitate more towards Hip Hop/ Hip Life.”
As a Level 300 student at Data Link University studying Banking and Finance hoping to catch some attention with her first self-titled single Abena, the femcee has been writing fiercely lately to create pieces worth the hype and air around her now.
“I have been rapping for a long time but I decided to take it to another level in 2012 by recording and performing seriously whenever and wherever I could find a mic and stage.
“I used to learn from other artistes’ but I had this fear of being in front of the crowd. I knew my family also was not going to make it easy for me to just take up music as a career because of preconceived ideas they had about the industry especially for musicians in the secular world.
“But I was so much in love with music I knew some day some how, I was going to start writing some hits so I had to let them know I was going to do this music and school thing side by side and make both work for me.”
She just released her official single but has been around performing alongside D Black, Sarkodie, Yaa Pono and several heavy weights in the industry.
“I am more for the studying of the landscape now and knowing what will work and what wont. I’m not in a rush to bring out an album; because I want to grow gradually with my audience. So I will be dropping singles to know what my listeners will want better, so I do more and more of that. I’m being very strategic because I don’t want to come up today and fall off the next day. I want to come in and stay forever.”
Dealing with a field reserved for wordsmiths of proven delivery, Abena Rockstar doesn’t seem to see any artistes as threats because she reveals not;
“I’m not seeing any competition as at now because the plan is basically to do me because not even a single artiste in this industry can do what I can do as an artiste and I obviously can’t be like them. I want to be myself and stand out and shine with the Abena Rockstar kind of music. The plan is to be myself as much as I can. I am talking about being original. The music industry is a man’s world but I am coming to pick on issues people haven’t talked about, or topics that got lost in translation ”
Being a lady with fine features and lots of spark, she concedes there is some doubt about the competition she’s bringing in because she believes,
“When you are a lady, there is a preconceived idea of how you should behave and what should you should do and not do. It’s a psychological box society has placed on us females but I will try as much as I can to thread out that imaginary box and be relevant for a long time to come.
“The reason why most Ghanaian female artistes don’t last is because they refuse to step out of the imaginary box society put in place for them at the beginning of their careers. They accept it and in the middle of their careers when they feel they have all the audience and want to rebel a bit, people start rolling their eyes and disengage from their brand.
“When a lady is rapping, most people don’t pay attention to the content of the song; once you are sexy all eyes will be glued on you. So you tempted to think if you stop being sexy, people stop listening.”
But she warns “I am a lady and whether I like it or not, I should be sexy.”
“I composed my records with all these stereotypes in mind and I will try as much as I can to veer off being this sexy rapper and be known for my rap and weight of my works.
“I have a song titledMayaasewhich talks about adolescent sex, Sobolo, Tooli, and Never Give Up. I try to teach with every word I put on the beat. I have done one with Cabum, Brenya and working with Kofi Kinaata now. I have just released a single titled Abena which was produced by Magnom.
To know how hungry Abena Rockstar is aiming for the rap crown, she reveals some of the sacrifices she had to make to be this good included deferring from school for one year because it was conflicting with her school schedule and more.”
