Rising singer/songwriter Christinna O shares her latest single “Lay It Down” with us. The 19-year-old singer details her experiences in a relationship gone sour, a situation she is desperately trying to fix.  Produced by Taylor Dexter, Wes Singerman, Waine, and Josh Engel, the record exudes a vintage RnB/soul vibe and showcases the singer’s alluring vocals and heartfelt style.

Christinna was born and raised in Miami, where her dad is a pastor and military jet painter, and her mom is a fitness trainer. But with its flashy culture, it’s a place she always has a conflicted relationship with. She found a community of like-minded artists in Philadelphia, which she first visited to read poetry, and where she joins a long lineage of creative R&B and soul artists.

A rare queer voice in R&B, Christinna is also a rising spoken-word poet who’s competed in the NAACP’s national slam poetry competition and leads Temple University’s poetry collective Babel, a tight-knit group of poets, rappers and musicians at the school where she’s a sophomore. She found her way to music and poetry in her early teens while being homeschooled in Miami to avoid bullying she’d faced in school: in her parents’ hallway, she figured out Pro Tools, pulling beats from Youtube, making melodies on her dad’s Yamaha keyboard, and topping it with her self-produced and self-engineered vocals. She developed a small but devoted following on Soundcloud with her self-released mixtape “The Violet Tape” (made at age 14), EP “Abide” (released as a senior in high school), and standout single “Milk Carton.” Her inventive, thoughtful melding of R&B and poetry found its way to a few music industry tastemaker ears, leading her to connect with Chahayed and Singerman for “Shelter.” It’s the first salvo from an EP Christinna plans to release in Spring 2019 called “Girl in Passing,” an exploration of complicated interpersonal relationships.

Connect with Christinna O: Soundcloud | Twitter | Instagram