Ayo

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"Ayo"

Single by Mya
from the album Liberation
Released	August 28 or 29 2006 (Airplay) December 12th, 2006 ( United States )
Format	Digital download CD single
Recorded	2006
Genre	R&B, pop
Label	Motown
Writer(s)	Chris Henderson
Producer(s)	Chris Henderson
Mya singles chronology
"Fallen" (2003)	"Ayo" (2006)	"Lock You Down" (2006)

This article is about Ayo as a single of Mya. For information on the singer see Ayo.

"Ayo" is a promo single from American R&B singer Mya's fourth album, Liberation. "Ayo" received minimal airplay and peaked at #70 on Billboard's Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart. It was also released as a digital single on iTunes. "Ayo" is however, not the official first single. "Lock You Down" is slated to be the official lead single from Liberation after it recently leaked in high quality on the web.

[edit] Critical response

At first, some fans were disappointed with the original version of Ayo but Chris Henderson and Mya made some changes to the single. Here's what Chris Henderson had to say about the single:

"This is slated to be the first single on Mya this time around so I'm happy about that. I was told late last week that it was shipping to radio this week. So anybody reading this needs to call and request it on their local radio station... then vote for the video when the time comes. Best believe your boy is gonna try to make a cameo (when the time comes). Working with Mya gave me a whole new respect for her because she was very patient, yet driven to get it done and get it done right. This wasn't the first time I met her, but that's another story. We finished the song in one late night session, backgrounds and all. She even waited for me to finish the vocal comp just to make sure that everything was right and nothing else was needed (that may not sound like a big deal but it was 4 somethin' in the morning and there are plenty of folks I've worked with that have been on that star shit). I wrote the song to be a fun tribute to the old school days of hiphop like Ladi Dadi, or Pink Cookies where people told stories with a little twist and just had fun on a record. I think the power in hip hop is that it covers more subject matter than R&B does. Before hiphop, R&B used to cover these subjects but once R&B became all about love, we needed hiphop just to have music to cover our other emotions. The verses on Ayo are busy and rhythmically structured liked a rap verse. I kept the melody active so that the verses wouldn't seem long. Now the track was put together on the MPC. Listening to a certain song on a certain soundtrack, I just took sounds and orchestral hits and put everything that I thought was interesting on the sample pads. Like an exercise or a puzzle, I was trying to see how many ideas I could come up with, putting different combinations together with the set of samples. This was the third idea that came from that exercise. I didn't add the 'Slick Rick-ish' drum sounds until later. As soon as I did the track, I had a good idea of how I wanted the song to come off. I passed the track around for a while, to EMI, to other writers, nobody could touch it. Rappers also wanted it, but nobody with a deal. Frustrated because I thought that the track was fire, I went ahead and wrote the song myself. My go-to demo girl at the time, Ronda Blackwell hooked it up perfectly. Later I was told that some of the lyrics needed to be changed for sample clearance reasons so Mya and I collaborated on the changes. I hope it goes well but at this point it's out of my hands. I hope y'all enjoy it... I hope it's promoted right.... I hope the video is hot.... I hope it opens doors. I hope but I don't worry... because my job is done on this one. It's all in God's hands now, so I'll just keep it moving. Enjoy, and God bless."

The Rap version of Ayo was leaked and got positive response from fans. It is unclear whether this version will be included in the album or if the original version will be included. S