Mereba is a Grammy-nominated singer, songwriter, and producer who writes in the space between neo soul, alternative R&B, and hip hop, and rarely stays in one lane long enough to be filed there. Critics have compared her unhurried, spoken-word delivery to Jamila Woods and Erykah Badu. She self-released her debut EP, Room for Living, in 2013, then signed with Interscope in 2018 behind the 9th Wonder collaboration "Black Truck" and her self-produced single "Planet U." Both landed on her 2019 debut album, The Jungle Is the Only Way Out, which featured 6LACK and J.I.D and drew praise from Pitchfork, Billboard, and Vogue. She returned in 2021 with the AZEB EP and again in 2025 with The Breeze Grew a Fire, her first release on Secretly Canadian.
She came up between two worlds. Born in Montgomery, Alabama, to an Ethiopian father and an African American mother from Milwaukee, Mereba moved often as a kid, trailing her parents' university jobs across the South. She landed at Carnegie Mellon before transferring to Spelman College in Atlanta, where she earned an English degree with a music minor and fell in with the Spillage Village collective alongside EarthGang and J.I.D. That upbringing, equal parts displacement and academic rigor, still shapes a catalog built on control: she writes, sings, and produces most of what she releases herself.
Mereba's guest verse on Dreamville's Revenge of the Dreamers III helped push that 2019 compilation platinum and earned her a Grammy nomination the following year. She has since played rooms across the US and Europe, including Lido, KOKO, Rough Trade Bristol, Thekla, Band on the Wall, and Blue Note Los Angeles. With a sound that draws college audiences, R&B and hip hop fans, and listeners looking for something outside the mainstream, Mereba is a strong booking for college concerts, festival stages, corporate events, and private engagements.
