Tiara Thomas

R&B singer-songwriter Tiara Thomas, who grew up in Indianapolis, Indiana, earned her degree from Ball State University in Muncie before launching her professional path through an encounter with Wale at a club in Atlanta, where she passed the rapper one of her recordings. The meeting quickly produced opportunities for Thomas to open shows for Wale and to sign with his and Le'Greg O. Harrison’s Board Administration imprint. She first appeared on Wale’s More About Nothing mixtape track “The Cloud,” then joined him as a featured artist on the 2013 single “Bad,” which climbed to number three on Billboard’s Hot Rap Songs chart and later earned gold certification. That June she exited Board Administration to align with producer-songwriter Rico Love’s Division 1 label, an Interscope affiliate. In October she issued the five-song Dear Sallie Mae EP, and the single “One Night” arrived the following year.