Mereba

Mereba was born in Montgomery, Alabama on September 19, 1990, and raised in Pennsylvania. She first developed an interest in music at age 4.[3] Starting with singing, Mereba eventually learned to play piano, and then guitar.[4] Mereba's parents moved frequently to accommodate their jobs as university professors.[3] Because of this, she was raised around different people with wide ranges of backgrounds. She began writing songs in elementary school and has said they were "a way to process her feelings of often feeling like an outsider in her environment." Mereba went to high school in Greensboro, North Carolina.[5][6] She also spent nearly a year living in Ethiopia, her father's home country.[4][5] Her mother is African-American and was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.[7]

After graduating high school at 17, Mereba continued her education at her parents' insistence, attending Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.[3] She eventually transferred in 2009 to the liberal arts women's college Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, seeking to immerse herself in the legacy of the historically black women's college.[3][4] Mereba graduated from Spelman in 2011 with an English degree and a Music minor.[3]

Mereba cites Stevie Wonder as her "fairy Godfather" after meeting him in 2016 and becoming his mentee through the last stretch of finishing of her debut album, The Jungle is the Only Way Out. Wonder specifically encouraged Mereba to continue to produce her own music, comparing her passion for production to his own passion for songwriting early in his career. Both passions were initially discouraged by the people who worked with both Mereba and Wonder. Mereb[16] a performed alongside Wonder at Soho House in Malibu in 2017, where he co-signed and personally introduced her to an intimate audience of listeners.[17]