In popular music, the rise of the anti-diva has proven the defining meme of the last decade. Artists ranging from Adele and Amy Winehouse to Solange and Janelle Monae have recreated the diva paradigm in their own distinct images - using their unique voices and personas to share the particular complexities of their existence. Now there’s another contender in this illustrious group: the dynamic, innovative, buzzed-about singer-songwriter known as Marieme - a presence at once as glamorous as she is brutally honest in her music.

Like those who paved the way before her, Marieme (the artist moniker of Marieme Diop) was influenced by the iconoclastic greats who created their own lanes: Erykah Badu, Dusty Springfield, Aretha, Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Lauryn Hill, Sarah Vaughn. What sets Marieme apart, however, is both her combination of a bold, expressive multi-octave voice and her individual perspective as a socially-conscious world citizen.

Six months after Marieme was born in the African nation of Mauritania, her life changed forever. When war broke out between Mauritania and her parents’ native Senegal, Marieme and her family were forced to escape. “We literally got on the last plane before the war went crazy,” Marieme explains from her current home base in Santa Monica, California. Her father, a top executive at a major electrical company in the region, was stripped of his livelihood. Before the war, the Diop family had a large home with staff and two cars; after, they were left with nothing. Marieme and her siblings went to live with their aunt in Senegal while her father and mother moved to the United States, settling in New York City’s Bronx neighborhood. It would be five years before they would be able to bring the rest of the family together again.