Biography

The American singer and songwriter known as Kehlani was born Kehlani Ashley Parrish in 1995 in California. Kehlani grew up in the Oakland area, where she attended the Oakland School for the Arts. Initially, Kehlani harbored dreams of becoming a dancer, but a knee injury steered her attention towards a different type of entertainment as her goal.

At the young age of fourteen, Kehlani made her debut as a performer as a member of the pop band PopLyfe. The group rose to become a finalist on the reality competition show, America’s Got Talent, in 2011. After the competition concluded, Kehlani dropped out of high school to begin focusing on her career full-time. Her first mixtape, Cloud 19, was released in 2014 and well-received commercially and critically. Her follow-up mixtape, You Should Be here, was equally successful, rising into the top ten on the R&B/Hip-Hop charts and ultimately earning her a Grammy nomination for Best Urban Contemporary Album. The mixtape spawned the singles: “Till the Morning,” “Get Away,” and “First Position,” and earned Kehlani a major label record deal with Atlantic Records.

Kehlani’s debut studio album, SweetSexySavage, recently arrived in January of 2017. She recently went on tour in support of G-Eazy, and her collaborative single with him, “Good Life,” was released in 2017.