R&B singer and songwriter Elle Varner earned critical praise and a Grammy nomination when she came on the scene in the early 2010s. Despite some career setbacks, she’s carried on making the smart, sophisticated music that was in her blood. • Varner comes from a family of singers and songwriters. Her mother and father played in the group By All Means, which recorded for Motown and Island Record in the ’80s and ’90s. • She started playing instruments at age six, picking up the flute before transitioning to piano and guitar. • While attending Alexander Hamilton High School’s Academy of Music’s Vocal Jazz Group in Los Angeles, she wrote her first song, “Thankful”. Although she played it with one string on the guitar, it was good enough to win her a local talent show. • After graduating from New York University’s Clive Davis Department of Recorded Music, she signed with RCA Records in 2009. Her debut single, “Only Wanna Give It to You”, arrived in 2011. • In 2012, she released a mixtape, Conversational Lush, and her debut album, Perfectly Imperfect, which peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard 200. • The single “Refill” cracked the Top 10 of Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart—it remains the biggest hit of her career. It also earned her a Grammy nomination for Best R&B Song. • Varner began working on her second album, Four Letter Word, in 2013. It was pushed back and later shelved when she was dropped from RCA Records. • She eventually released the mixtape Ellevation in 2019. Rappers Wale and Rapsody feature on the collection.