Melii

Assertive rapper, singer, and songwriter Melii made significant commercial headway with a bilingual remake of Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow” (2017), but she promptly made it known that she had more to offer than creative twists on the work of other artists. Following the album PhAses (2019) and numerous singles, she briefly left the music industry, but returned in 2022 with the Medusa EP.
Raised on an assortment of Dominican and Latin fusion sounds in her Harlem household, Melii had her head turned in another direction when a cousin played her J. Cole’s “College Boy.” At the time, Melii was only nine years old, but the track pointed her toward rap as a viable creative outlet beyond writing. She made her official recorded debut in August 2017 with the mellow but assured “No Simple Chick,” followed it two months later with “Bodak Yellow,” and by the end of the year had released a third single, the tougher “Balling.” The atmospheric “Bk Woe” and pouty yet swaggering “Icey” were issued in early 2018 as Melii prepared the release of her first album. Additional singles arrived throughout the year including “Sh*t Talk,” “La Envidia Mata,” and “Como Si Na.” Her debut, PhAses, landed in 2019 and featured appearances by Tory Lanez, Odalys, and A Boogie wit da Hoodie. After a run of singles across 2020 and 2021 that included the 6LACK collaboration “You Ain’t Worth It,” Melii posted on Twitter that she would no longer be making music, citing her distrust of the industry. Her retirement proved to be short-lived; she returned mid-2022 with a new EP, Medusa. ~ Andy Kellman