UMI

With a voice that’s warm and soothing as well as vulnerable, UMI’s intimate alternative soul songs are mostly concerned with matters of the heart. The singer went viral in 2018 with tracks like “Remember Me” and “Butterfly,” and she made her major-label debut with the EP Introspection in 2020. Her debut album Forest in the City arrived in 2022.
Born in Seattle in 1999, Tierra Umi Wilson was keeping a songwriting journal by the age of five. While in high school, she began regularly uploading covers, but after running into a couple copyright roadblocks, she switched to original material recorded to public-domain beats with a simple USB mike. UMI’s first self-produced efforts appeared in 2016, followed by her debut EP, Interlude, in 2017. It featured a different guest producer on each track and landed on some high-profile playlists. With Wilson enrolled at USC in Los Angles, the EP was picked up by 408 Records in early 2018. Later that year, tracks including the stand-alone release “Remember Me” started racking up hundreds of thousands of streams.
UMI issued the two-track Balance in mid-2019, then signed with J.J. Abrams’ Loud Robot label for the visual EP Love Language. That year, she also left school to pursue music full-time. Arriving in October 2019, Love Language included “Love Affair,” another million-plus streamer. Around that time, UMI was featured on the Cautious Clay track “Saturday Morning Cartoons.” Her next EP, Inspection, was delivered by Keep Cool/RCA Records in 2020. Introspection Reimagined followed in 2021. Forest in the City, her self-written debut full-length, appeared in 2022. A standalone single, “Happy Im,” arrived in 2023. ~ Marcy Donelson