Gabriel Teodros (born 1981) is a hip hop artist and a member of the groups Abyssinian Creole and CopperWire. He was raised on Beacon Hill, Seattle, Washington. Teodros' music often features socially conscious themes, and he was a catalyst in the surge of dynamic underground rap acts from the Pacific Northwest during the first decade of the 2000s.[ Biography by Cyril Cordor]. Allmusic.
Early life Teodros was born and raised in Seattle, Washington. His parents met through anti-war organizing in the 1970s, and they split up around the time Gabriel was born. He stayed with his mother who was from Ethiopia, and met grandparents, uncles, aunts, and cousins as they first emigrated to the United States and all stayed in the same house.Interview: Gabriel Teodros. The Find Magazine. July 13, 2010.
Teodros's relationship with hip hop culture began at a young age within the South Seattle neighborhood of Beacon Hill. "A lot of kids in my neighborhood were affected by gang culture. And I kind of had a death wish. I felt like, at an early age, that I wasn’t going to live to 21," he said in an interview with Sheeko Magazine. He spent his high school years in Las Vegas, Nevada where as one out of approximately 30 students of color in a predominantly white school, something within him changed. "It was the first time I understood that there was a system in place that wanted kids like me to want to die. And understanding that in high school made me want to live," he said in the same interview. The former breakdancer, graffiti writer and closet-emcee finally began to take his career path seriously at age 16, using hip hop to both understand and explain his world."Profile: Gabriel Teodros" by Alison Isaac . Sheeko Magazine. July 2008.
Music career
1999–2005: Beginnings and Abyssinian Creole Teodros began his musical career around 1999, when he returned to Seattle and began working with a live band called 500 Years. That same year, he met an MC named Khalil Crisis (better known as Khingz), from the group Maroon Colony. The two groups began sharing bills together all over Seattle and the two MCs also began working with a community organization called Youth Undoing Institutionalized Racism. In 2001, YUIR sent them to a conference in New Orleans, and it was there that Teodros and Khingz saw how much they had in common outside of music. They formed the group Abyssinian Creole to both represent their peoples and the bridges between them.Gabriel Teodros (of Abyssinian Creole) - interview by Todd E. Jones. Insomniac Magazine. December 19, 2006.
Also in 2001, Teodros released his first solo album, entitled Sun To A Recycled Soul.
In 2002, he was featured on the song "Liquid Sunshine", from the album Flood by Moka Only, which was his first appearance on vinyl and was recorded prior to his the release of his debut album. He later described Moka as a mentor, stating "When I was 19 years old, he kind of took me under his wing and showed me what it was like to have a home studio and how to do all this stuff independently."
In 2005, Abyssinian Creole released its debut album, Sexy Beast, a record that gives expression to the post-1990s cosmopolitanism thriving in South Seattle."Let 'Lovework' Rule" by Charles Mudede. The Stranger. February 27, 2007. The album's featured guests include Moka Only, Geologic of Blue Scholars and Macklemore."My Philosophy" by Larry Mizell Jr. The Stranger. December 1, 2005. What Sexy Beast made apparent was the diversity of Northwest hiphop: It can come from anywhere (East Africa, Haiti) and be about anything (love, immigration, meditation)."Up & Coming" by Charles Mudede. The Stranger. January 10, 2008.
2006–2007: Lovework
In the spring of 2006, Teodros completed the entire Lovework album with producer Amos Miller, around the same time MassLine Media was being formed with Teodros, Blue Scholars and Common Market. Lovework had additional beat contributions from Sabzi of Blue Scholars, Moka Only, Kitone, and Specs One. Its sound was primarily influenced by Seattle veteran Vitamin D (who also mixed the record) and the late J Dilla. The album title, Lovework was inspired by bell hooks and her book All About Love: New Visions, where hooks insists that to truly know love, one must agree that love is a verb. She goes further to say to truly know love, one must work to undo every system of domination that stops people from truly loving. The title was also inspired by a quote from Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet: "Work is love made visible".
Also in 2006, Good Medicine was formed: a four-person group composed of Teodros, Khingz, Macklemore and Geologic of Blue Scholars. Good Medicine have headlined a handful of shows in the Seattle area but have never released any music as a group."Things are hopping for hip-hoppers Blue Scholars" by Tom Scanlon . The Seattle Times. January 19, 2007. Towards the end of that year, Teodros independently released a mix-tape/CD entitled Westlake: Class of 1999, which was a collection of his unreleased songs recorded in four different cities between 2002 and 2006."I Don't Label, I Just Call It Like I Hear It" by Angelica LeMinh . Shotgun Reviews. 2007.
The Lovework album was released on February 27, 2007, on MassLine, to critical acclaim."My Philosophy" by Larry Mizell Jr. The Stranger. February 14, 2007 The album topped the CMJ Hip Hop charts for two weeks and came in at No. 19 for the year 2007.College Music Journal. New Music Report. 2007. Teodros was also named as one of URB Magazines "Next 100"."Next 100" Gabriel Teodros - Reviewed by Kevin Polowy. URB Magazine. 2007.
2009–2010: Air 2 A Bird and GT's Ethiopium In the fall of 2009, after being deported from the London-Heathrow Airport and having to cancel a European tour, Teodros found himself in a Brooklyn, New York recording studio with Lovework producer Amos Miller."Gabriel Teodros Talks about Life, Music, and the Future" Interview by AddisTunes . AddisTunes. November 20, 2009. They spent two weeks together crafting a 12 track album produced using mostly GarageBand, a piano, and the recordings of actual birds.Air 2 A Bird "Crow Hill" Album Review by Alex . KEXP 90.3 FM. August 12, 2010. The result was Air 2 A Bird's Crow Hill, released independently in the summer of 2010."Gabriel Teodros & Amos Miller’s Air 2 A Bird" by Chul Gugich. SSG Music. August 17, 2010.
In December 2009, Teodros released GT's Ethiopium: A Jitter Generation Mixtape."Ethiopium" by Toast. Last Night's Mixtape. December 17, 2009. This release shined a light on the realities of Ethiopia, touched on America's own imperfections and stressed the importance of exploring one's own intelligence and spirituality. It was made completely using instrumentals from Oh No's Ethiopium, which was made completely using old-school and rare samples of Ethiopian music."Gabriel Teodros – GTs Ethiopium: A Jitter Generation Mixtape (2009)" Dopehug. December 18, 2009.
2012: Colored People's Time Machine and CopperWire In January 2012, Teodros released Colored People's Time Machine, his first full-length solo album since Lovework."Review: Gabriel Teodros - Colored People's Time Machine" by Jonathan Cunningham. Okayplayer. January 2012. Colored People's Time Machine was recorded in Seattle and Brooklyn and is a multi-lingual, multi-genre album that featured vocal, instrumental, and production collaborations with 20 different artists. On it, he explored themes of love (Goodnight, a brief interlude on a long-distance relationship), cultural identity (Blossoms of Fire), personal identity (Alien Native, a biographical tale), the concept of home (Diaspora and Beit), loss (Ella Mable Bright, a tribute to his grandmother featuring Meklit Hadero), music (Colored People’s Time Machine, and Sun and Breeze, also featuring Meklit Hadero and Amos Miller), and the music industry (You A Star, on which he warns about the pitfalls of the industry and the danger of buying into the illusion of stardom)."New Release: Colored People's Time Machine by Gabriel Teodros" by Anne Mazimhaka. This Is Africa. January 18, 2012. Other guests on the album include Mexico City's Bocafloja, Los Angeles emcee SKIM, and Palestinian wordsmith Sabreena Da Witch.
On April 17, 2012, CopperWire's debut album Earthbound was released on Porto Franco Records."NEW MUSIC: Earthbound – Copperwire". 206up.com. April 16, 2012. CopperWire is a group composed of Teodros, Meklit Hadero and Burntface. All three celebrate their Ethiopian ancestry on the album, but do so through the characters of galactic fugitives aboard a hijacked starship."Space Music: CopperWire, Eastern Bloc Funk and Mœbius" by Robert Lamb. Discovery News. April 25, 2012. Earthbound'''s story, as described in liner notes by award-winning science fiction author Nnedi Okorafor, casts CopperWire members as characters that journey to Earth in the year 2089 to learn what it means to be human. They include mad scientist Scholar Black (Burntface), alien-human hybrid Getazia (Gabriel Teodros) and interstellar telepath Ko Ai (Meklit Hadero)."With Earthbound, CopperWire Creates a Soulful Sci-Fi Space Opera" by Scott Thill. Wired. April 25, 2012. The album uses metaphors of intergalactic distances to talk about diaspora and cultural connection and disconnection."Star search" by Mirissa Neff. San Francisco Bay Guardian. May 2, 2012. The album also uses sonified light curves (that is the sound of stars, processed through Fourier analysis into frequencies that can be heard by humans) courtesy of SETI Institute researcher and NASA Kepler Labs analyst Jon Jenkins.
2014: Children of the Dragon and Evidence of Things Not Seen
On May 7, 2014, Teodros independently released the album Children of the Dragon with Washington, DC–based producer AirMe. Teodros met AirMe in 2011 during a 24-hour layover in Washington, DC while traveling between the cities of Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Seattle, WA. They recorded their first song together that day, before co-creating 20 more tracks together the following month."Premiere: Gabriel Teodros x AirMe '24 Hour Layover'" by Alyssa Klein. Okayafrica. March 18, 2014. The title Children of the Dragon is a reference to mythology Teodros first heard of in Haile Gerima's film Teza."Gabriel Teodros: Children of the Dragon". Africa Speaks 4 Africa. July 6, 2014.
On October 28, 2014, Teodros released the album Evidence of Things Not Seen with Auckland, New Zealand–based producer SoulChef, and featured vocals from Jonathan Emile, Shakiah and Sarah MK. The album and its title were largely inspired by James Baldwin, and it was released within a full-size book of Teodros' lyrics."Stream Gabriel Teodros' James Baldwin-Inspired 'Evidence Of Things Not Seen' LP" by Z Weg. Okayafrica. October 30, 2014. City Arts Magazine described it as the best album of Teodros' career."The Power Of Place" by Jonathan Cunningham. City Arts Magazine. December 2014.
2018: History Rhymes If It Doesn't Repeat (A Southend Healing Ritual)