All along, Sullivan has cultivated a substantial secondary discography as a songwriter and featured vocalist, underscored with a number one R&B/hip-hop hit co-written for Monica ("Everything to Me") and a Grammy-nominated duet with PJ Morton ("Built for Love").
Although Sullivan has released only two full-lengths since then, namely Love Me Back (2010) and Reality Show (2015), they have also been met with widespread acclaim, high chart placement, and additional Grammy nominations. Shortly after that, she launched her career as a headliner with the similarly successful "Need U Bad," the first single off Fearless (2008), a Top Ten album that garnered seven Grammy nominations, including Best R&B Album and Best New Artist. Stymied before she was able to release an album recorded in her mid-teens, the Philadelphian broke through in her late teens as a songwriter with "Say I" (2006), a Top 40 hit for Christina Milian. Given the versatility the R&B artist has displayed as a gospel-reared and stage-trained powerhouse vocalist, the production would require a large and exceptionally talented ensemble to do right by the source material. Sullivan, along with Bryson Tiller, contributed the title track for the Insecure soundtrack in 2017, and in late 2020, she released two singles-the slow-burning “Pick Up Your Feelings” and the haunting “Lost One”-that furthered her legacy as one of the 21st century’s finest practitioners of classically minded yet forward-thinking R&B.Jazmine Sullivan has authored the kind of songbook that could form the basis of a jukebox musical. After taking a break from the music business in 2011, she returned three years later with the sweeping “Dumb,” the first single from her explosive 2015 full-length Reality Show. Love Me Back, her 2010 follow-up, expanded on her strengths, with the regretful “Holding You Down (Goin’ In Circles)” and the swaying Ne-Yo collaboration “U Get On My Nerves” highlighting her growth as a vocalist. That versatile, humor-laced album, led by singles including the storming “Lions, Tigers & Bears” and the vengeful “Bust Your Windows,” earned her several Grammy nominations and established her as a next-generation force in pop-soul. A session with fellow Philadelphians Kindred the Family Soul resulted in her meeting hip-hop pioneer Missy Elliott, who went on to produce Sullivan’s 2008 debut, Fearless. Born in 1987, Sullivan honed her talents at the Philadelphia High School for the Creative and Performing Arts. A soul belter who pens cutting lyrics, Philadelphia-born Jazmine Sullivan became an R&B sensation because of her devastating honesty and no-nonsense singing style.