On Awaken The Sleeping Giant, New York emcee Queen Herawin delivers a cathartic blend of stunning tales of personal growth with raw, speaker-shaking instrumentals. As one third of The Juggaknots and through previous solo work, she’s more than proven herself as a force in the world of Hip-Hop. But ATSG is simply on another level—and its release was well worth the wait.

After dropping her debut, Metamorphosis, in 2015, Queen Herawin moved from NYC to Chicago and put out an EP, The Space Between Things. And upon returning to New York she hit a creative wall and began to internalize her feelings and thoughts. Eventually, those emotions that she had turned a blind eye to emerged to tell the story of an awakening.

Queen Herawin brings those feelings to life in the form of both track titles and jaw-dropping lyricism, and she gets right to the point on the opener, “Focus.” A gut-punch of writing, the song is also a flat-out banger thanks to Bear-One’s production. It sets the tone for the rest of the record, too, as Herawin moves through emotions like “Anger,” “Denial,” and “Shame” with an unmatched pen game. But she also makes room for bravado and culling self-doubt on standout tracks “Arrogant (feat. Poison Pen)” and “Manifest (feat. Apathy & Mickey Factz).”

“The album is a musical memoir,” Queen Herawin explains. “It’s about acceptance, but also awakening to the things I wanted to bring awareness to.” Most importantly, ATSG represents Queen Herawin’s journey and personal growth, and she hopes it will have a similar effect on listeners.

Awaken The Sleeping Giant hits all major digital retailers and streaming platforms on February 28th via Matic Records. The album features Pretty Bulli, Illa Ghee, Ke Turner, Poison Pen, Open Mike Eagle, Apathy, Mickey Factz, Aaqil Ali, Rachel Walker, and fellow Juggaknot, brother Breeze Brewin. Producers include Bear-One, Supastition, Neff Beats, Solitaire, Johnny Slash, King Rem, B-Money, EMPEE, J.Depina, Neff Beatz, Marlon “Solitaire” King and DJ Deception.