Held captive for 11 years, Michelle Knight took scraps of poems and songs with her after she escaped from Ariel Castro’s Seymour Avenue home. She’s just released “Survivor,” her first song. Her close friend Aaron “D-Boyy” Dissell, a producer who’s worked with acts such as Machine Gun Kelly, Layzie Bone and aspiring rapper and former NBA Star Daniel “Booby” Gibson, produced the track. “At first, I didn’t know the papers were what she wrote in the house,” says Dissell in a press release. “When she told me, that made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. There it was, everything, in its raw form. Art.”

Taryn Manning (Orange is the New Black, 8 Mile, Hustle & Flow), who plays Michelle Knight in the Lifetime movie Cleveland Abduction, has called the piano ballad an “amazing song.” It’s now available for download on iTunes, GooglePlay and Amazon.

This article appears in May 20-26, 2015.

Jeff has been covering the Cleveland music scene for more than 25 years now. On a regular basis, he tries to talk to whatever big acts are coming through town. And if you're in a local band that he needs to hear, email him at jniesel@clevescene.com.