Her name is Gabi Wilson, but you know her as H.E.R. And at the age of 21, she just won two massive awards: Best R&B Album and Best R&B Performance at the 61st Annual Grammy Awards.
Though if you watched The Today Show about nine years ago, you could've predicted this moment. When she was 12, Wilson was hailed as a child prodigy and played a masterful cover of Alicia Keys' "No One" on The Today Show.
Years later, when striking out on her own, Wilson abandoned all precedent. She chose to forged her own trail — that's what bring us to her mysterious stage name, H.E.R. When RCA records sent out H.E.R.'s first album in 2016, the press package lacked any information about the artist. Everything would be revealed in time, the package said. Fittingly, that's what the name H.E.R. stands for: "Having Everything Revealed."
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
Where did this lofty concept come from? Wilson — at that point known only as H.E.R. — told the Los Angeles Times that the moniker came to her while she was recovering from a break-up. "I remember saying I'll never be that girl, I'll never be that girl that falls for the wrong guy. I was constantly criticizing that girl and eventually I found myself being that girl, being her," she said.
The ensuing album tracked her evolution into that person. In interviews, Wilson expressed interest in capturing the process of growing up. “You can’t avoid heartbreak, you can’t avoid a lot of things. You have to go through them in order to become the person you’re going to be. So, being H.E.R. is just the evolution of being a woman,” Wilson told Now Toronto. H.E.R. represents all that she'll learn during her becoming.
Wilson's identity was eventually revealed in 2017. But her evolution is still continuing – and we have the pleasure of watching it unfold from here on out.