Niykee Heaton

Niykee Heaton moves between intimate acoustic pop ballads and hazy, unhurried grooves shaped by current rap and R&B, first attracting notice through her YouTube uploads. While still attending high school in suburban Chicago, she began posting bedroom videos in 2011 that featured covers of R&B, rap, and pop songs as well as scattered originals she played on acoustic guitar. Late the next year, her rendition of Chief Keef’s “Love Sosa” landed on WorldStarHipHop the day before she turned 18, prompting Steve Rifkind and Russell Simmons to sign her to their Capitol-affiliated All Def label. September 2014 brought the six-track EP Bad Intentions, a collection of sleek yet guitar-accented pop-R&B hybrids. Late in 2015 she staged The Bedroom Tour across Canada and the United States. Capitol proper released The Bedroom Tour Playlist in March 2016; presented as a mixtape, it contained remixed and remastered versions of material Heaton had already circulated through steady social-media promotion. The project opened at number 39 on the Billboard 200.