Siya

The exploratory and inventive California-born, Brooklyn-raised rapper upped her profile in 2014 after being featured on the T.I. executive-produced reality TV series Sisterhood of Hip Hop.
Born Michele Andrea Sherman in 1987, in Barstow, California, she began rapping as a seven-year-old, inspired by artists such as Bone Thugs-N-Harmony and Jay-Z. Caught between her mother’s drug addiction and a father serving life in a Bay Area prison, she went to live with her grandmother in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn’s Eleanor Roosevelt housing projects, at the age of 11. Only a year later, she was admirably resolute in her efforts to break into the music industry. After leaving high school in her junior year, Siya began to rap about her sexuality, and by her early twenties had moved to Atlanta.
Siya’s self-released debut mixtape, 2011′s Elevator Dreams, featured the early singles “I’m Gone” and “Smoke, Drink,” which caught the attention of Tank, who duly signed her to his R&B Money imprint in 2012. That moment was captured in Sisterhood of Hip Hop, which eventually aired in three series between 2014 and 2016. Siya’s appearance on the show marked one of the first times that an openly gay female rapper had broken through to the mainstream. By the time it aired she’d moved to Los Angeles and released the D. Y. K. E. (Damn You Killin’ Em) mixtape, which featured Tank on its title track. The following year saw two more mixtapes, Better Late Than Never and What Never Happened; the latter project was a rumination on the absence of her father during her childhood.
In early 2016, Siya was featured front-and-center on Tank’s pulsing single “#BDAY” alongside Chris Brown and Sage the Gemini. The year closed with SIYAvsSIYA, a slick R&B Money-backed debut album which featured cameos from Lyric Wright, Ashley Rose, and Kreesha Turner. Tank returned to guest on “Don’t You (Say Yes),” the cornerstone track on her February 2017 Commitment EP. Then, despite never having a drama lesson in her life, Siya was recommended by the actor Larenz Tate for an upcoming role in Deuces, a crime movie under production by Queen Latifah’s Flavor Unit. She was cast in the film which premiered that April. She released another EP in 2017′s 383: For Roosevelt.
Siya’s appearance in Deuces led to further film offers. She was featured in July 2018′s The First Purge — written by James DeManaco as a prequel to his Purge series — and starred in Jordan Cann’s Street Dreams: Los Angeles later in the year. On parting company with R&B Money, 2018 also saw Siya tackle her mental health and anxiety issues head on with the self-released mixtape Mad Energy. 2019 brought collaborative singles with Knoxxy and Eric Bellinger, and she appeared in Will Wernick’s horror mystery No Escape in mid-2020. January 2021′s “What You Deserve,” June’s “Coupe” — a joint single with Delaware’s $avay — and a brief cameo on the coda to Cordula Faye’s 2022 song “Risked It All” each showed that Siya was adept at creating and contributing to tracks in a classic, languid R&B style. In January 2023, Siya appeared in the Bet+ limited series Angel, while simultaneously releasing a major-label EP, Mixed Emotions, via Def Jam. ~ James Wilkinson