Aaliyah Haughton was born in 1979 in Brooklyn, New York and was raised in Detroit. Aaliyah, which means “Highest Most Exalted,” was the daughter of Michael and Diane Haughton and was very close to her older brother Rasha...

Aaron Hall was born in 1964 in The Bronx, New York. He first established himself in the music industry as a member of the group Guy. The group was comprised of Hall, Teddy riley and Timmy Gatling and later on, Hall's bro...

Albert Joseph Brown III, known to the music world as Al B. Sure! was born in 1969 in Boston, Massachusetts. Growing up in Mount Vernon, New York, he made his first musical appearance with a friend on a soundtrack for Ses...

Alexander O'Neal was born in Natchez, Mississippi in 1953. At the age of 20, O'Neal moved to Minneapolis where he played in a variety of musical groups. Alexander O'Neal performed in the groups The Mystics, Enterprise, and Flyte Tyme. ...

Angela 'Angie Stone' Brown was born in 1961 in Columbia, South Carolina. She started her career in the early 1980s as a member of The Sequence, one of the first female hip-hop groups. With the group, she released the tra...

Anita Baker was born in 1958 in Toledo, Ohio. She grew up in Detroit, Michigan where she sang in the choir. At the age of 16, Anita joined a band, Humanity, which included her friends and performed around the city.

After the trio Guy broke up, Teddy Riley began perfecting his production abilities and founded the group Blackstreet. He created the group in 1994, which was comprised of himself, Chauncey 'Black' Hannibal, Levi Little a...

The Philadelphia quartet, Boyz II Men also seen as Boyz 2 Men, Boys II Men and Boys 2 Men, formed at the High School of the Creative and Performing Arts in 1988. It star...

Brandy Norwood was born in 1979 in McComb, Mississippi. Her family had strong musical ties as her father, Willie Norwood was a pastor, choir director and former R&B singer and her mother was a cousin of blues singer Bo D...

Michael 'D'Angelo' Archer was born in 1974 in Richmond, Virginia. He released his debut album, Brown Sugar, in 1995. The album slowly generated sales, only proving popular after the hit single 'Lady' began receiving a lo...

Donnell Jones was the son of a pastor and spent a lot of his childhood acting out in church. At eleven, his mother bought him a keyboard and he taught himself to play. With his father's influence as a gospel singer, Jone...

Erica 'Erykah Badu' Wright was born in 1971 in Texas. Badu was a dance student at Booker T. Washington High in Dallas where she received the nickname “MC Apples” and was a member of a freestyle female rap duo.

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Faith Renee Evans was born in 1973 in Lakeland, Florida. Her father left the family when she was very young and so Evans was raised by her mother and aunt in Newark, New Jersey. Her mother was eighteen w...

Freddie Jackson was born in October of 1956 in Harlem, New York. As Jackson grew up, he sang as a gospel singer at White Rock Baptist Church. At the church, he met Paul Laurence who would become his record producer.

Freddie...

Joe Thomas grew up in Opelika, Alabama and was the son of two preachers. He grew up singing in the choir, playing guitar and eeven directing the choir at his church.

Because of his roots in the church, Joe was in...

Karyn White was born in 1965 in Los Angeles, California. The youngest of five children, she sang in the church choir as a child.

During college, White worked as a backing singer and sang on Jeff Lorber's 'Facts...

Keith Sweat was born in 1961 in Harlem, New York. In 1975, Sweat got his start in music with a Harlem band called 'Jamilah.' The group toured the Tri-State area and helped hone Sweat's singing abilities.

Signed...

Kelly Price was born in Queens, New York in 1973. As a child, her family struggled to make ends meet in Queens, where they often went hungry. Her father died when she was nine, and Price never really knew who he was.

She starte...

Lauryn Hill was born in 1975 in New Jersey. She attended Columbus High School and was an active student, performing in talent shows. She acted in the TV show As The World Turns when sixteen, and had a role in Sister Act ...

Luther Vandross Jr. was born in 1951 on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, New York. When Vandross was eight, his father died of diabetes. At thirteen, Vandross and his family moved to the Bronx. At roughly the same time,...

Mariah Carey was born in Long Island, New York to the former opera singer Patricia Hickey and Alfred Roy Carey. Her mother is Irish American and her father is of African-American and Venezuelan descent. The third and you...

Mary J Blige was born in 1971 in the Bronx, New York. Mary's father left her family when she was only four years old, leaving her, her sister and their mother to fend for themselves. The family moved to Yonkers a few yea...

Monica Denise Arnold was born on October 24, 1980 in Atlanta. As a child, Monica sang in church like her mother.

Despite her young age, Monica came to prominence at fourteen in the year 1995 when producer Dall...

Profyle first appeared in the R&B world in 1999 when they released their debut album Whispers in the Dark. The quartet is comprised of a pair of brothers and cousins originally from Shrevport, La. Inspired by the success...

Robert Sylvester Kelly was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1967. He was the eldest of four children and lived in the Southside Projects. In high school, Kelly performed in talent shows and had his dreams reinforced by a high school music te...

Soul II Soul was founded by Jazzie B and features a changing roster of musicians. The group started in the late 1980s in London. The group dominated the club scene and released their album Club Classics, Volume 1 to much...

The group Xscape formed in the early 1990s and was composed of sisters LaTocha 'Meatball' (born in 1973) and Tamika 'Juicy' (1975) Scott, as well as Kandi Burruss (1976) and Tameka 'Tiny' Cottle (1975). The Scott sister'...