They say success happens when prepartion meets opportunity, and that’s exactly what happened for a college girl with a dream and a love for music.
Since hearing the angelic voice of Tiara Thomas accompanying Wale on the track “Bad” off his recent mixtape Folarin, the music industry has been buzzing about a girl from Nap Town. The 23-year old singer was discovered by the Maybach Music Group rapper on a fate filled night in 2009 that would eventually kickstart her career. “I was in Atlanta with one of my friends I went to school with; she was my manager at the time. She’s like, ‘Hey, let’s go to Atlanta for spring break, just to go somewhere,’ Thomas recalls. “We went and I had a fake ID. I was under 21 at the time and we just wanted to go to the club. So we went to the club and Wale was there. It was like, ‘Hey, there’s Wale, let’s take a picture with him.'”
The Indianapolis native traded contact information with Wale and record label, the Board Administration, and sent along some YouTube clips, hoping to make a lasting impression. When Wale finally reached out to Thomas three months later, he agreed to fly her and her father out to New York where he was working on his Seinfeld-themed mixtape, “More About Nothing.” The two collaborated on the acoustic-tinged track, “The Cloud,” which they eventually recorded an official video for.
Thomas made it clear in 2011 that she was taking her music career to the next level. In her artist Bio she recalls her childhood love of music and poetry, becoming discouraged as a female rapper, and teaching herself how to play guitar.
Tiara followed Cloud with a track she crafted that would eventually become “Bad.” The inspiration behind “Bad” came from an unexpected source. “There was this rap song called ‘Some Cut’ by Trillville. It used to be one of my favorite songs when I was younger. It’s really vulgar. I wanted to find a way to cover the song and make it sound pretty,” she says. “I started singing the words and then I just freestyled and started singing. I was like, ‘Dang, that’s tight!” Check out Tiara Thomas performing “Bad” solo and remixing some of the lyrics from her orginal track.
Her debut album “Sallie Mae” will drop later this year.
