Shea Diamond

Shea Diamond crafts soul-rooted songs centered on resistance and liberation as a singer and songwriter. Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, she grew up partly in Memphis, Tennessee, and Flint, Michigan before settling in New York City. Throughout her early years she faced repression and marginalization for rejecting assigned gender expectations, which prompted her to leave home at 14 and enter foster care. After gaining emancipation she could not afford gender reassignment surgery, turned to armed robbery, and served nearly ten years behind bars. During that time she honed a commanding vocal delivery and an unflinching songwriting voice.

Following her 2009 release she moved to New York, kept developing her music, and became an active participant in the transgender rights movement. A recording of her original composition “I Am Her,” described as a gutbucket blues-soul anthem for outsiders, caught the attention of songwriter and producer Justin Tranter, whose credits include Imagine Dragons’ “Believer” and Selena Gomez’s “Bad Liar.” The encounter resulted in a recording contract with Asylum, a label distributed by Warner. Her first commercial single, the studio version of “I Am Her,” appeared in October 2016. In April 2018 the flirtatious, anti-colorism track “Keisha Complex” arrived as the lead-in to the EP Seen It All, which Tranter executive produced and co-wrote.