Canadian pop-R&B singer and songwriter Alessia Cara (full last name: Caracciolo) made her recorded debut in 2015, though she started racking up YouTube views -- with acoustic covers of popular songs across several genres
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Canadian pop-R&B singer and songwriter Alessia Cara (full last name: Caracciolo) made her recorded debut in 2015, though she started racking up YouTube views -- with acoustic covers of popular songs across several genres -- four years earlier. Upon graduating from high school in her native Brampton, a suburb of Toronto, Ontario, Cara opted to devote a year to music rather than go straight to college. She continued to regularly upload YouTube clips and landed a major-label recording contract with Def Jam. Matched up with Andrew "Pop" Wansel, Warren "Oak" Felder, and Coleridge Tillman, a trio of songwriters and producers with dozens of R&B and pop hits between them, Cara co-wrote and recorded the distinctive wallflower anthem "Here" and had the song released as a single in May 2015. Featuring a sample of Isaac Hayes' "Ike's Rap II," previously utilized by Portishead for "Glory Box" and by Tricky for "Hell Is Round the Corner," its streams numbered in the millions prior to the premiere of its official video. A five-track EP, Four Pink Walls, arrived that August.
