Tamia

Tamia’s smooth and smoky voice, coupled with a soulful and deeply romantic debut album, carved out a space just for her in the landscape of late ‘90s R&B and beyond. Born in Ontario, Canada, in 1975, she got her first taste of the big leagues when the legendary Quincy Jones tapped her to sing on “You Put a Move On My Heart,” the lead single from his 1995 album, Q’s Jook Joint. That song—which nabbed her a Grammy nomination for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance—gave her the momentum to jump-start her solo career with 1998’s Tamia, collecting two more Grammy nominations in the years between. In 2000, she released A Nu Day, establishing a more modern sound with crisper, poppier production and collabs with artists like Missy Elliott and Dallas Austin. But it’s Tamia’s powerful mezzo-soprano—an instrument she honed in the gospel choirs of her youth—that has always been at the forefront of her music, a gift that conjures conviction in ride-or-die odes (“Still”), falling-in-love songs (“So Into You”), and venomous kiss-offs (“Single”). It’s carried her well into 21st-century success, with her 2015 album, Love Life, hitting No. 1 on the Billboard Top R&B Albums chart with the strength of songs like the seductive “Sandwich and a Soda.”