Arama Brown is an R&B singer, multi-platinum songwriter, and video game software developer who performs publicly under her forename, Arama. Before collaborating with artists like Major Lazer, The Glitch Mob, Lil Wayne, and TOKiMONSTA, Arama grew up in East St. Louis, Missouri. Her mother worked as a choir teacher, and Arama soon learned to harness the power of her own voice, looking to artists like Sade, Lauryn Hill, Gnarls Barkely's C-Lo, and Dinah Washington as her main influences. Meanwhile, her father worked as a dance instructor, which inspired Arama to broaden her performance skills. Graduating high school in 1997, she minored in music at the University of Illinois in Chicago and began writing songs for other artists. Her first big hit was Noel Gourdin's "The River," which reached Number 1 on the U.S. Billboard Hot Adult R&B Airplay chart in 2007. Three years later, she earned another hit with Miley Cyrus' "Ordinary Girl," which was released on the Hannah Montana Forever, peaked at number 91 on the Billboard Hot 100, and went gold in the US. She soon found success as a solo artist, too, appearing on songs like Major Lazer's 2013 single "Playground" and The Glitch Mob's 2018 release "Take Me With You." Although also Arama devoted time to her day job as the lead software engineer of Unomi, a software developer focused on video game animation, she began releasing solo singles, too, including 2019's "Better With You," 2021's "Angel (Dub)," and 2023's "Feel So Close."
