Tiana Major9

Tiana Major9 crafts soulful, introspective material that evokes Lauryn Hill and Jazmine Sullivan while nodding to fellow British vocalists Marsha Ambrosius and Estelle. The Newham-raised Londoner, signed to Motown, first gained widespread attention in 2019 via the duet “Collide” with EarthGang, featured on the Queen & Slim soundtrack. The ballad logged an extended stay on Billboard’s Adult R&B Songs chart before earning a 2021 Grammy nomination for Best R&B Song. In the interim she delivered the At Sixes and Sevens EP in 2020, followed by Major Mantras in 2021 and the Fool Me Once EP in 2022.

Raised in a Jamaican family within London’s Newham borough, Tiana Thomas absorbed a wide range of sounds, performed in church, and gravitated toward jazz and R&B. Adopting the name Tiana Major9 after a favored chord, she reached the finals of MOBO’s UnSung contest in 2014. Her initial commercial singles, “Merry Go,” “Levee (Let It Break),” and “Mr. Mysterious,” surfaced in 2017 and 2018. The busy 2019 campaign opened with the Rehearsal @ Nine EP, which collected two of those tracks, and closed with the completion of her Motown contract.

Issued in November 2019 on the Motown-backed Queen & Slim soundtrack, “Collide” debuted on the Adult R&B Songs chart that month, accumulated 26 weeks, and secured the aforementioned Grammy nod. Her domestic visibility also grew through a guest spot on Stormzy’s chart-topping U.K. album Heavy Is the Head. The song anchored At Sixes and Sevens, released in August 2020; four months later Back at Sixes and Sevens arrived, presenting acoustic renditions alongside the original set as a virtual second disc.

Brief spoken affirmations, rendered acoustically, punctuated At Sixes and Sevens. Tiana broadened the concept on Major Mantras, issued in February 2021, by expanding it into seven two-minute pieces built on the same stripped-back motif, again appending the full earlier EP as a virtual second disc. Two months afterward she released At Sixes and Sevens Remixed, which included reinterpretations featuring SiR and Vince Staples plus the duet “On Read,” originally heard on Lucky Daye’s Grammy-winning Table for Two EP. The remix collection once more recirculated At Sixes and Sevens as its virtual second disc. Later that year she contributed a version of Janet Kay and Dennis Bovell’s U.K. reggae staple “Silly Games” to the Small Axe soundtrack and unveiled another “Lucky” remix. Fool Me Once, a four-song EP containing a Smino collaboration, followed in March 2022.