UMI [Live October 28, 2020 Afropunk Live Session]

Tierra Umi Wilson [born February 9, 1999] is an American singer and songwriter. Born in Seattle, Washington, she attended the University of Southern California, but dropped out in 2019 in order to pursue music. She is best known for her 2018 song "Remember Me", which has over 50 million streams on Spotify. She also accompanied Conan Gray as an opening act on his Comfort Crowd Tour in 2019.

Wilson was born in Seattle in 1999 to an African-American father and a Japanese mother. Her mother taught her how to read, write, and speak Japanese. Wilson's mother plays piano and her father plays the drums. UMI started writing music when she was 4 or 5, with a songwriting journal. Throughout high school, she was involved in DECA [Distributive Education Clubs of America] and her track team at Tahoma High School in Maple Valley. She then studied at University of Southern California before dropping out in 2019 to pursue music. In high school, she discovered YouTube beats and started writing to tracks. She would record the songs with a USB mic and upload them to SoundCloud and YouTube. She soon started to get copyrighted on SoundCloud by posting covers of other songs. This made her start writing and posting her own originals.

In 2017, UMI released five singles before her four-track debut EP, Interlude. This led to making it onto Spotify’s Fresh Finds Best of 2017 playlist. She opened for rapper ODIE in Los Angeles. UMI's most popular release to date is "Remember Me". She has over 21 million views on YouTube and 53 million plays on Spotify. UMI debuted “Remember Me” with a music video, highlighting universalism by portraying couples of different race, class, and sexual orientation. She said, “the message in the video, for me, is that no matter who you love or how you love, we all hurt the same in the end.”

She released the Balance EP on May 17, 2019, which included the songs “Ordinary” and “Down To Earth.” On October 30, 2019, she released her EP, 'Love Language' On June 21, 2020, she released her EP, "Introspection".

UMI has cited her biggest musical influences as Frank Ocean, D'Angelo, Jhené Aiko and SZA. She grew up listening to R&B, soul, gospel and Japanese pop/rock. UMI has been described by Vogue as having a "lo-fi, alternative, laid back, R&B style".

Courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMI_(singer)

In Memoriam: Frankie Paul Come & Talk To Me [Jodeci Cover] [1992]

Paul Blake [19 October 1965 – 18 May 2017], better known as Frankie Paul, was a Jamaican dancehall reggae artist. Born blind, he has been dubbed by some 'The Jamaican Stevie Wonder'.

Born in Jamaica in 1965, Blake was born blind but as a child had his sight partially restored by an operation on a hospital ship. He sang for, and impressed Stevie Wonder when Wonder visited the school that Blake attended, prompting him to pursue a singing career. Adopting the stage name Frankie Paul, he first found fame in the early 1980s, and he recorded prolifically throughout the decade. He recorded for virtually every producer/studio in Jamaica at some time, and was known to release several albums a year.  Notable works of Frankie Paul include the popular "Sara" and "Worries in the Dance". Paul resided in The Gambia from 1994. In January 2016 he underwent surgery to amputate a foot and part of his leg. Frankie Paul died on 18 May 2017 at the University Hospital of the West Indies in Kingston, Jamaica.

Courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankie_Paul

DJ Koco a.k.a. Shimokita 45 Live w/45 Songs [Vol. 1] [#Explicit #NSFW] [#ThisIsForTheDJs]

 

UMI [#Explicit #NSFW] [Live October 19, 2020]

Tierra Umi Wilson a.k.a. UMI [born February 9, 1999] is an American singer and songwriter. Born in Seattle, Washington, she attended the University of Southern California, but dropped out in 2019 in order to pursue music. She is best known for her 2018 song "Remember Me", which has over 50 million streams on Spotify. She also accompanied Conan Gray as an opening act on his Comfort Crowd Tour in 2019.

Courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UMI_(singer)

Kali Uchis Solita [2019]

Karly-Marina Loaiza [born July 17, 1994], known professionally as Kali Uchis [/ˈuːtʃis/ OO-chees], is a Colombian-American singer and songwriter. She debuted in the music industry with her 2012 mixtape, Drunken Babble, which was described as "genre-defying". She released her first EP, Por Vida, in 2015 to further recognition. Her debut studio album, Isolation, was released in 2018 to widespread acclaim.

Courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kali_Uchis

Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson Your Daddy Loves You [May 1974]

Brian Robert Jackson a.k.a. Brian Jackson was born on October 11, 1952 to Clarence and Elsie Jackson, respectively a New York State parole officer and a librarian at the Ford Foundation. He spent the first two years of his life in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, later sharing a house in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn with his uncle Howard, wife Dorothy and young cousin Sidney until his parents separated by the time he was five.  Unable to take on the responsibility of sharing mortgage payments alone, Elsie was forced to move to a one-bedroom apartment in Crown Heights, Brooklyn until she remarried in 1968.  Jackson studied music in Fort Greene with his mother's childhood teacher, Hepzibah Ross [fondly called 'Aunt Heppie] with whom he took lessons for seven years. When Elsie was unable to continue payments for lessons, Aunt Heppie granted him a scholarship, simply stating that Jackson showed 'great promise.'  His mother later married Alvin S.Lovell a General Practitioner from Bedford Stuyvesant who often donated his services to uninsured residents of the community. In 1968, their daughter and Brian's sister, Alison Lovell, was born.  From 1965-1969 Jackson attended Brooklyn's Erasmus Hall High School, where he met other musicians and began to form bands on the outside while participating in school music programs.

Courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Jackson_(musician)

Millie Jackson Till I Get It Right [1981]

Mildred Virginia Jackson a.k.a. Millie Jackson [born July 15, 1944] is an American R&B and soul singer-songwriter and former model. Beginning her career in the early 1960s, three of Jackson's albums have been certified gold by the RIAA for over 500,000 copies. Jackson's songs often include long, humorous, and explicit spoken sections. She recorded songs in a disco or dance music style and occasionally in a country style. Occasionally, Jackson has been called the "mother of hip-hop," or of rapping itself. According to the cataloguing site WhoSampled.com, her songs have appeared in 189 samples, 51 covers, and six remixes revealing the appeal of her proto-typical rapping style of delivery.

Courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millie_Jackson

Sevyn Streeter ft. Davido Kissez [October 7, 2020]

Amber Denise "Sevyn" Streeter a.k.a. Se7en was born on July 7, 1986, in Haines City, Florida, to Tim and Karen Streeter. She grew up singing in church and talent shows; by the time she was 5, Streeter already knew she wanted to sing for a living. At the age of 10, she competed on Showtime at the Apollo and tied for first place by singing "My Funny Valentine".

Courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevyn_Streeter

David Adedeji Adeleke a.k.a. Davido was born on November 21, 1992, in Atlanta, Georgia. His father Adedeji Adeleke is a business magnate and his mother Vero Adeleke was a university lecturer. Davido is the youngest of five siblings and his father's second-born son. He attended the British International School in Lagos and at the age of 16, he moved to Alabama, US, to study business administration at Oakwood University. Davido bought musical equipment while at Oakwood and started making beats. He also worked with his cousins B-Red and Sina Rambo to form the music act KB International. Davido dropped out of Oakwood University to pursue music full-time and relocated to London, where he worked on his vocals. After returning to Nigeria in 2011, Davido paused his music career and agreed to honor his father by enrolling at Babcock University. In July 2015, he graduated from Babcock with a degree in music after his father paid the university to start a music department for an inaugural class of one student.

Courtesy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davido

In Memoriam: Malik Izaak Taylor a.k.a. Phife Dawd Dear Dilla [2014]