Vali

Vali

2 songs 1 albums

New York City-born Vali actually got her big break at a nursing home. She was three years old and visiting her Alzheimer’s stricken grandmother. To lift her spirits, she broke out into dance moves while her mom played piano. “My grandpa was like, ‘Whoa!’” the urban-pop singer recalls. “‘We have to get her into dance classes.’”

Grandpa’s talent-scouting proved prescient. These days, Vali is a triple a dancer and an actress—but first and foremost, a singer. Her R&B-inflected tracks are an assortment of stories with sticky hooks. For instance, the soulful “Polaroid,” produced by Sap (Mac Miller’s “Donald Trump”), is muses about the paparazzi, while “Roxanne” retells the Police song from the protagonist’s view. “I love characters,” she says. “It’s the theatrical side of me.” Her work abounds with humor and heart—a nod to her love of Stevie Wonder and The Beatles, as well as to her hardscrabble upbringing, which she’s always taken in stride.

Vali was raised by her single mom in the Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood. “There were a lot of gangs, a lot of drugs,” she says. “I was not a kid who got to go out. Music was…safe.” And she was surrounded by Her mom was a clarinetist, and her dad, who lived nearby, a symphony conductor. Vali threw herself into classical piano, tap-dancing, and ballet, shepherded around in an old Buick by her grandfather, himself a ballroom dancer.