R&B star H.E.R. was born Gabriella Wilson on June 27, 1997 in Vallejo, California. Before she was a teenager, she had appeared on The Today Show and was a contestant on The Next BIG Thing. Her talent landed her a record deal at RCA, and at age 14 she released her first single, “Something to Prove”. She began working on a set of autobiographical songs and ended up releasing them under the moniker H.E.R. (which stood for Having Everything Revealed) in 2016 as the EP H.E.R. Vol 1. A surprisingly mature collection of heartfelt, often sad, love songs, the EP was talked up by Alicia Keys, Usher, and Wyclef Jean among others and soon her material began attracting a larger audience on social media. The EP would hit number 12 on the R&B chart, and the follow-up EP, 2017’s H.E.R. Vol. 2, would reach number 7 in June of that year. Four months later those EPs were combined to form her debut album H.E.R., a number 1 R&B album that boasted the top 10 R&B singles “Focus” and “Best Part”. She took home Grammys for Best R&B Album and Best R&B Performance in 2019. The follow-up album I Used to Know Her also went top 10 and included a number 6 R&B hit with the Bryson Tiller duet “Could’ve Been”. In 2020 she scored her 6th R&B top 10 hit with “Damage”. One year later, “Fight for You” a song she co-wrote for the soundtrack of the Academy Award nominated historical drama Judas and the Black Messiah, won the Oscar for Best Original Song. Also in 2021, H.E.R. put out Back of My Mind, her second number 1 R&B album, and the single “Come Through”, became her 7th R&B top 10 hit.
