Karyn White

Karyn White, the crossover contemporary R&B singer, was born in Los Angeles, California, where her father performed on trumpet and her mother directed the church choir. Early on, she honed her voice in choir settings as well as through appearances at local talent shows and beauty pageants. She first performed with the area band Legacy before touring alongside R&B vocalist O'Bryan in 1984. Her lead vocal turn on instrumentalist Jeff Lorber’s “Facts of Life” earned her a Warner Bros. recording contract.

The self-titled debut arrived in 1988, its material two-thirds produced by L.A. Reid and Babyface. The album surpassed two million copies sold and yielded three number-one R&B singles—“The Way You Love Me,” “Superwoman,” and “Love Saw It”—along with “Secret Rendezvous,” which reached number four. Ritual of Love, the 1991 follow-up, carried production from Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis. It moved more than half a million units, propelled by the additional number-one R&B single “Romantic.” White and Lewis later married, remaining together for seven years before their divorce.

Jam & Lewis supplied further production on the 1994 album Make Him Do Right, which fell short of the commercial heights reached by her earlier work. White subsequently withdrew from the music industry for several years to raise her family while running real-estate and interior-design businesses. She reemerged in 2012 with her fourth album, Carpe Diem, issued on the EMI-distributed Lightyear label.