In Rotation: Lee Vasi

Lee Vasi wrote her first song at age ten while playing Young Nala in The Lion King on Broadway. Most child performers peak in that exact moment, but Vasi took the grueling scenic route. After getting cut from the Top 50 on American Idol in 2018, the Fayetteville native stepped entirely away from the spotlight to rebuild her artistic foundation. The work paid off. Now based in Atlanta, she just dropped her debut LP, Love Me To Life, and it is an absolute clinic in vocal arrangement. Vasi operates in the Christian R&B space, a subgenre that usually makes me brace for sanitized secular knock-offs. She completely bypasses that trap. Pulling heavily from her African American and Puerto Rican-Dominican heritage, she anchors her faith in actual soul music. She sings bilingually on cuts like "Ámame a La Vida," grounding her spirituality in heavy, pocket-driven grooves. Love Me To Life runs twelve tracks long with zero features. That is a massive flex for a debut project in the current streaming era. It forces you to sit squarely with her voice. Her tone is raw and lived-in, carrying the dense vocal stacking you would expect from early Brandy or Mary Mary records rather than standard contemporary worship fare. You can trace this current victory lap back to her viral breakout single "Teach Me," which crashed the Billboard Gospel charts and earned her an NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding New Artist. The industry is finally catching up to her pen. She recently signed with Capitol Christian Music Group to release music under TAMLA Records—a legendary imprint to have attached to your name. Programmers are actively paying attention. Radio stations from 92Q Jams in Baltimore to the Detroit Praise Network are putting her in heavy rotation, and Apple Music just bumped her single "Worthy" up to #27 on their Breaking R&B playlist. She earned this moment. Press play down below.