Kehlani — July 2026

Kehlani Ashley Parrish was born April 24, 1995, in Oakland, California, and raised by her aunt after her parents — both dealing with addiction — were unable to care for her during childhood. She attended the Oakland School for the Arts, where she trained in dance including ballet and modern dance, with aspirations to audition for Juilliard before a knee injury in junior high redirected her focus entirely to singing. The injury that ended her dance ambitions opened the path that led to everything that followed.

She first emerged on America's Got Talent in 2011 as part of the teen pop group PopLyfe, before leaving the group to develop a solo direction more aligned with the R&B, soul, and hip-hop-adjacent sound that defined her Oakland upbringing. Her 2014 self-released mixtape Cloud 19 arrived with a maturity and emotional directness rare for a debut tape from a nineteen-year-old, and its gold RIAA certification confirmed that the audience existed for uncompromised R&B storytelling in an era where the genre was being redefined by streaming and social platforms. You Should Be Here (2015), her follow-up mixtape, also earned gold certification and a Grammy nomination for Best Urban Contemporary Album — the first Grammy recognition for an artist who had released nothing through a major label, a distinction that announced her commercial viability before she had formally entered that infrastructure.

She signed with Atlantic Records for her debut studio album SweetSexySavage (2017), which peaked at number three on the Billboard 200 and established a catalog of R&B-pop productions that combined emotional vulnerability with commercial polish. It Was Good Until It Wasn't (2020) peaked at number two on the Billboard 200. Blue Water Road (2022), her third album, peaked at number thirteen and received widespread critical acclaim for its exploration of queer identity and emotional complexity. Crash (2024) extended her catalog at number twenty-five. On June 11, 2025, she released Folded — a single that peaked at number six on the Billboard Hot 100 and won Best R&B Performance and Best R&B Song at the 68th Annual Grammy Awards, making her one of the few contemporary R&B artists to achieve Grammy recognition for a standalone single from a streaming-era catalog. Her self-titled fifth album followed in April 2026.

At LIV Nightclub inside Fontainebleau Las Vegas, Kehlani performs live vocal sets that bring the emotional directness of her R&B catalog to a premium Las Vegas nightclub environment. Her confirmed 2026 LIV dates include June 19 and July 10. Guest list through NoCoverVegas for her Las Vegas appearances. Sources: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kehlani, grimygoods.com/2024/05/28/kehlani-to-perform-three-nights-at-liv-at-the-fontainebleau-las-vegas/