Yebba

Yebba, born Abigail Elizabeth Smith on January 16, 1995, in West Memphis, Arkansas, is a soul and R&B singer whose voice carries the full weight of the gospel tradition she grew up inside^[1]. Her stage name is her mother's nickname for her: "Abbey" spelled backwards, a small act of devotion that became the name she would carry into a career shaped by loss.

Raised in a deeply religious household, Yebba began singing in her father's church as a young child. Her father served as both pastor and organist, and the Clark Sisters and Aretha Franklin were formative influences on her ear and her sense of what a voice could do^[1] By fifteen, she had become a worship pastor, shaping her understanding of performance as service and devotion rather than spectacle. . She later attended Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee, where she continued to develop as an artist.

In 2016, Yebba's mother, Dawn Smith, died by suicide^[1]. The loss was seismic, reshaping not only her personal life but the direction of her entire artistic practice. She came to wider public attention around 2017, when a video of her singing Sam Smith's "Stay With Me" went viral, revealing a voice of uncommon depth and restraint^[1].

Her profile rose further in 2016 when she delivered a backing vocal performance on Chance the Rapper's SNL performance of "Same Drugs," a moment that introduced her voice to a much wider audience^[1]. In 2019, she won a Grammy Award for Best Traditional R&B Performance for her feature on PJ Morton's cover of "How Deep Is Your Love," becoming one of the few artists of her generation to receive that recognition before releasing a debut album^[1].

Her early career also included a co-sign from Ed Sheeran, who signed her to his Gingerbread Man Records imprint in 2017, leading to the release of her debut single "Evergreen."^[1] She signed to RCA Records in 2020.^[1] Her reach extended into hip-hop circles as well: she is widely reported to be the inspiration behind Drake's track "Yebba's Heartbreak" on his 2021 album Certified Lover Boy.^[1]

Her debut album, Dawn (2021), was named for her mother and drew directly from the grief and questioning that followed her death. It established Yebba as one of the most emotionally rigorous voices in contemporary soul and R&B, praised for its intimacy and its refusal to offer easy comfort.

Her second album, Jean (2026), named after her late grandmother, marked a further evolution: a folky, gospel-inflected collection created over five years with collaborator John Rooney and composer James Francies, recorded across Arkansas, Dallas, and Electric Lady Studios in New York^[2]. Critics described it as an enthralling account of an artist learning to be less precious about linear healing, drawing comparisons to Sufjan Stevens and Cleo Sol^[3].

The grandmother Jean was, by Yebba’s account, a figure of unwavering spiritual conviction, someone who lived a long, full life and left behind a sense of settled peace rather than unresolved grief. In preparing to write Jean, Yebba returned from New York to West Memphis, Arkansas, to write closer to home, a return that shaped the album’s introspective, unadorned character.