Born on January 29, 1992 at the Mackenzie hospital, he grew up in the mining town of Linden and focused on strictly academics.
Life has always been a challenge for Anthony “Chiney” Abrams, and being the eldest son of his mother he always felt the need to excel academically.
Becoming an artiste or musician was never in his thoughts, he said. “I was always working towards becoming a doctor or an engineer. At that time, the musician life would’ve seemed impossible and would’ve never worked well with my subtle “nerdy personality,” he added.
Abrams always did well at literature and worked a lot with his mom to ensure he got the best results in this subject area. One day, while he was in high school, his mom introduced him to the art of poetry writing. I immediately fell in love with the idea of words expressing my thoughts in a rhythmic majestic manner. And that’s where it all escalated for the young artiste.
From there, he and his mother wrote short poems together and compared them over a two- year period, at the end of which he was a fifth former at the Mackenzie High School in the science stream – still dreaming of becoming a doctor.
After graduating in 2008, his love for poetry evolved into writing songs. “I wrote a number of songs and I always amazed my siblings by the beauty of my thoughts expressed by lyrics.” However, he never envisioned himself actually performing.
At that point he only saw himself as a writer and not a performer/ singer.
A singer blossoms In 2009, he met “Alko”, a talented individual who shared similar interests in music, “We started rehearsing and working on our original songs. In 2010, we recorded a single called “Big Up Every Girl” and decided that we would call ourselves Mixup an allusion to our mixed ethnicity.” The first time Abrams ever performed was at the Linden Technical Institute at its valentine show where he subsequently met Devin Sears, the director of Divine Entertainment, who sought to promote local talent.
“We immediately moved to record “ Jus Be Muh Self Mixup (myself and Alkofi) featuring Diana Chapman in 2010.” It was his first music video and from then on his career grew; it was unbelievable, he declared.
In January 2012, his cousin told him about the Carib Soca Monarch competition and he decided that he wanted to enter in the competition.
“We entered“ Wine attack… lime tomato celery seasoning”. Michael James wrote it, Divine Entertainment produced it, Guyanese and the international community liked it; from then on it was a journey that landed me tours, trip to Barbados, recording deals with Peter Ram and Biggie Irie, and pursuit my first album,” the rising Lindener added.
This year, competition for the Carib Soca monarchy has stepped up a notch, with great entries – proof that the quality of Guyanese music is on the rise.
Abrams’ entry for the competition, “Pose”, is of a different genre of soca, which he termed “power soca”, where the tempo is much faster, and instrument arrangement and variation is explosive. It definitely puts you into a road march, party mood, the singer said.
“Pose” I would say is a multi- ethnic song which cross borders to fuse our Creole and Spanish languages; it speaks to a woman in a party named “Dos”, a play on the Spanish numbering system, who does various poses that draw desired attention to herself; you can have fun with this song, juk, wuk up, wine do whatever you like, just “Pose”,” he disclosed.
This year, he believes that he is more prepared and confident and his team is work ing tirelessly to get it right.
Through it all, he remains optimistic of becoming the next Carib soca king. He is slated to compete with 16 others in the semi- finals of the compe tition in Berbice on Saturday evening and is hopeful that he makes it to the grand finale on February 16 at the National Park.