It’s Messy – A Survivor Song Cycle

When I woke up this morning I did not expect to be releasing my debut album today. Sometimes, life is just magic, and wonderful, and unstoppable.

I’d been seeing the ads for Suno on Facebook. Normally, I just assume that flashy new things are not for me. There’s always a series of paywalls. The “free” plan is only ever a tease, right?

After years of being asked if I’d ever considered putting my poetry to music, and begrudgingly answering that I just don’t have the music skills or the connections, this seemed possible. I’m very leary of offers to help because I get my hopes up and get ghosted, or someone wants ownership of my work, or someone’s ego makes it impossible. Art is painful.

So, I was just going to take a look at what was free, and fell in love. I got sad when I ran out of song credits each day as an entire queue of poems had to wait for my credits to refresh.

And there it was again. The paywall.

It wasn’t about waiting for credits. I can control my impulses. Pay the basic plan and you get commercially shareable songs. I had completely written off this possibility, but all of a sudden an avenue opened to get my work on Spotify, and iTunes, and all of the other streaming services.

I managed to pick 10 songs. It was so incredibly difficult. I’ll probably be releasing new music every month for the rest of my life.

🎧 Album Description: It’s Messy

It’s Messy is a one-person ritual disguised as an album — a cycle of songs that moves through origin wounds, systemic absurdity, queer resilience, and the slow, deliberate work of repair. Each track is a fragment of lived truth, pulled from hundreds of poems and reshaped into a genre-blending journey that refuses to tidy itself up for anyone’s comfort.

The album opens with a grounding invocation, a musical threshold that invites listeners into a space of safety and shared breath. From there, It’s Messy travels through the tangled middle: the humor, the grief, the rage, the bureaucracy, the survival strategies we inherit and outgrow. Folk, Afrobeat, swing, emo-rap, and pop vocals collide and collaborate, mirroring the way real healing never stays in one genre.

Across ten tracks, Protyus builds a world where queer community, chosen family, and ritual performance become tools of reclamation. The songs don’t offer easy answers – they offer companionship, clarity, and the courage to name what’s true. The album closes the way it began: with a return to safety, a reminder that repair is possible, and that the story doesn’t end with the wound.

It’s Messy is not just a debut. It’s a declaration of agency, a survivor’s archive, and the first chapter of a living ritual that will continue to evolve month by month.

It’s a Healing Journey for us All

This album is a wish, a prayer, a promise, a repair and a refusal to concede. I receive different gifts from this album each time I listen through. I can’t remember the last album I didn’t just put on shuffle, and of course each track is lovely on it’s own, but there’s a healing here, and it’s here for you too.