Some of my strongest and earliest memories are centered around music, but specifically r&b. My parents throwing house parties and my uncle burning everyone a CD of the songs we danced to each time after. My aunty singing Johnny Gill’s “my my my” into a corded mic in our living room or blasting “Video” by India Arie for us in the car with the windows down. @so_niadosanjh burning me mixtapes of Aaliyah, Toni Braxton, Soul for Real, Sade, and The Fugees, fighting with her over who got to perform Monica’s verse in the “Boy is Mine.” Spending HMV birthday vouchers on Motown albums and summers at my Nanni’s in wolverhampton watching MTV religiously because we didn’t have that channel at home. One uncle filling my first ever iPod with thousands of songs including all the early demos and Quincy Jones commentary from “Off The Wall” and another teaching me to play Mariah Carey songs on their old keyboard. Coming home from the school book fair with a giant poster of Destiny’s Child instead and @edijana.r pretending to be Alesha Dixon dancing on a table in our classroom. Performing “Wishing on a Star” at a talent show and choreographing dances to TLC with my sisters and later, Omarian’s “Ice Box” with my best friends after school lmaoo. Gabrielle’s Rise was the only thing my Dad played in our car for like a year straight I swear. When I was around 14 or 15, I remember being told I couldn’t study music at GCSE level and a year or two later getting rejected from an internship with universal music and thinking that was that because it was such a pipe dream anyway. But the way the universe works is WILD and here I am. What’s meant for you really doesn’t miss you 🎯 It’s easy to lose the feeling of being a fan in this industry because there’s a lot of noise and we have a long way to go for making it better for women, but I’m blessed to have been able to carve out a path doing what I love with some with some of my favorite r&b artists of today’s generation who remind me of that magic I felt as a kid. 11 year old Priya would never ever have thought it was possible and yet...!🤎