Alissia Is Ready to Step Out From Behind the Boards
"I don't remember life without music ," Grammy -nominated producer ALISSIA tells Newsweek . For the renowned multi-instrumentalist, music has always been an infinite curriculum, and even after viral videos, calls from legends and years spent producing for artists across generations, she still absorbs her craft with the appetite of a student who has only begun to understand what sound can do.
She recalls piano lessons at age 4 and a childhood home where Motown played constantly. "Unconsciously, I was always being fed with the best music."
Her early education widened quickly: theory and harmony led to string arranging, big-band writing and conducting, while studio gear, engineering and production opened another set of doors; then bass and synthesizers entered the picture, and curiosity became the engine of a career.
"It was a snowball of me being a sponge," ALISSIA said. "I wanted to learn everything I could learn." Michael Jackson 's synth-heavy soundscapes on Thriller sharpened her interest in production, while Prince 's catalog pushed her toward drum machines and the LinnDrum. "You always want to learn more," she added. "It's infinite."
From Behind the Boards to Center Stage
For years, however, her name drove other artists' work. A viral YouTube clip had brought label interest, touring offers and a call from Prince, yet ALISSIA declined early deals because she felt her artistic identity still needed room to mature. "I didn't feel like I was matured enough as an artist—my sound and what I wanted to do," she said. "I'm very, very intentional with the music I make."
She kept touring, although the studio pulled harder, and as word-of-mouth brought more collaborators through the door, producing became an around-the-clock apprenticeship alongside artists she had long admired. "I wanted to be in the studio creating," she said. "After a while of working with all the greatest—and people I'd always wanted to work with—I felt like I had really advanced myself."
The decisive nudge arrived with her Grammy nomination for Producer of the Year, Non-Classical, which transformed a private archive of songs into an urgent public project. "I was like, 'OK, now it's time to make my own thing,'" she said. "The click moment was the Producer of the Year nomination. I was like, 'I need to drop now. Let's go.'"
The recognition capped a run that had already earned her a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year for her work on Mary J. Blige's Good Morning Gorgeous . But her Producer of the Year, Non-Classical nod put her in rare company as only the ninth woman nominated in the category
Connecting Generations Through Collaboration
She opened the chapter with Hypnotic Night , pairing powerhouse guitarist Nile Rodgers with the malleable Atlanta rap duo EARTHGANG on a record built to connect eras. For ALISSIA, the collaboration embodied her creative purpose to study the architects, absorb their lessons and carry the language forward. "It made sense to start with paying homage to the legendary Nile Rodgers," she said, "and pairing him up with EARTHGANG, who are amazing talents."
The combination seemed improbable only from a distance. EARTHGANG's refusal to remain inside a single genre appealed to ALISSIA, whose first industry mentors belonged to an earlier generation; Prince contacted her, Bootsy Collins brought her onto her first major project, and the orbit around those sessions included artists whose records had taught her how groove could carry history. "I started with the older generation," she said. "I was really learning from the legends when I first started."
Her instincts had formed even earlier, when Chic's Good Times became the first bass line she learned and James Brown's The Payback served as another foundational text. Years later, while preparing sessions with EARTHGANG in Atlanta, she played the duo a track without knowing whether they would enter its particular pocket; they immediately did, and soon afterward Rodgers sent her an unsolicited message saying he admired her work. "I was like, 'Let me know how soon, because tomorrow I've got a song idea for you,'" she recalled.
A second single, Can't Get Enough , extended the story through Anderson .Paak, a longtime collaborator and friend with whom she had already worked across several projects. The song preceded its placement in his film and soundtrack K-Pops, although the movie gave it a new setting and a wider frame. "It was already in the tuck for my project," she said. "I was waiting on the right time and the right partner to release it."
Building Songs in the Room
Those collaborations reveal a producer who treats every session as its own narrative, and because artists arrive with different degrees of certainty, ALISSIA shifts easily between architect, accompanist and listener. When Mariah Carey entered a session carrying the seed of an idea, ALISSIA was already hearing a progression and imagining the sweep of an iconic ballad; in other rooms, she begins with a question—what is on the artist's mind, what have they been hearing, and what do they want the music to say?
"There's nothing more organic, raw and vulnerable than being in the room with the artist," she said. Although she keeps finished tracks ready—preparation matters when a surprise call can change the next day's schedule—she prefers songs to emerge through conversation and shared momentum. "The greatest music has always been made when you're in a room with someone," she said. "You're songwriting as you go."
Experience can make established artists faster at locating a song's center, yet ALISSIA sees little difference in the deeper work, because once reputations fall away and everyone commits to the room, each collaborator faces the same blank space. "It's so crazy, because when you're really in the studio and being vulnerable, we're all the same," she said. "We're just trying to make the best music we can make."
Studying the Past to Find Her Own Voice
Her fluency across funk, soul, disco, jazz , pop and hip-hop comes from rigorous study rather than period dressing, and she compares musical history to any other history worth knowing: a foundation for understanding the present and avoiding empty repetition. "It's impossible—and not worth it—to try to recreate what was already created," she said. "I want to study the history of music in order to pay homage, and also find my own voice through what's already been created."
When she learned bass, ALISSIA moved systematically through the legends of the instrument: James Jamerson, Paul Jackson, Bernard Edwards, Bootsy Collins, Larry Graham and Louis Johnson, buying versions of their instruments and studying where their hands landed on the neck, how they shaped tone and which details made a line unmistakable. She has since applied the same forensic attention to records across decades, analyzing drum machines, vocal treatments, plug-ins, arrangements and mixes until influence becomes vocabulary. "You take elements from different people," she said, "and that's how you find your own voice."
For all her range, keys remain the most reliable portal, since piano was her first instrument and a strong song, she believes, should retain its force when production falls away. "Keys are always my go-to," she said. She may begin elsewhere—with programmed drums, a bass line or a sound whose texture suggests a direction—but piano returns the song to its bones. "If it's a great song, then it should sound great just on an acoustic instrument."
Songwriter and producer ALISSIA is bridging gaps between musical generations.
Chasing a Signature Sound
Her emerging project has also sent her deeper into the vocoder, whose synthetic voice appears in the bridge of Can't Get Enough and will surface again as a recurring signature. Seeking a model once associated with Herbie Hancock and later used by Daft Punk—a machine so scarce, she said, only 30 were made—ALISSIA contacted Anthony Marinelli, whose synthesizer work connected him to Michael Jackson's Thriller sessions.
Marinelli invited her into a studio filled with vintage synthesizers and drum machines, including instruments used during those sessions, and he found the rare vocoder she had been chasing. They rented it for several days and recorded extensively, while the room's history became material rather than monument. "I was really searching for a special thing," she said. "What can I do that's special to me, that's my signature and that is different?"
Even among legendary equipment and celebrated collaborators, reverence does not become paralysis. ALISSIA says she rarely feels starstruck, because the assignment remains practical and communal: make something alive before the session ends. Pressure appears mainly as a hope—"I just hope I do something fire"—although she guards against the endless calculations capable of draining a record of instinct.
"Is this too commercial? Not commercial enough? Too musical? Not enough?" she said. "We tend to get in our heads a lot, so I always think, remember to have fun with it. Remember to enjoy what you're doing in the moment." If the work remains vulnerable and comes from the heart, she believes another listener will eventually recognize something of their own inside it.
A New Chapter in Her Own Name
Now ALISSIA wants listeners beyond the industry to recognize the connective tissue running through a catalog she has spent more than a decade building. She laughs about fans asking whether she has other music after discovering her recent single, because answering requires a lengthy playlist, not a title. "I've been making this music and producing stuff for people for 10 years," she said. "They'll be like, 'Oh my God, I didn't know you did this song, and that song, and this song.'"
The artist project will make those connections visible, although she is careful to preserve surprise, and while audiences may arrive expecting the groove-centered expertise attached to her name, she intends to move beyond any single forecast. "People expect certain things from me moving forward," she said, "but it's going to be different—in a good way."
Her ambitions remain expansive, yet the philosophy beneath them is disarmingly simple: learn relentlessly, honor the source, enter the room prepared and leave enough space for joy. After years of helping other artists locate their sound, ALISSIA is stepping forward with an identity strengthened by every session behind her.
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