OUR SEASON DEBUT of Mixtape Memoir begins with a story of perseverance. Of becoming. A journey of knowing yourself, overcoming the odds and the naysayers, and manifesting your vision to chart your own unique path. Raised in New Orleans, Dawn Richard was the daughter of a professional musician and educator, and a dance teacher. While surrounded by music growing up, it wasn’t until her late teens that she made a life-changing decision to pursue music as a career. An unshakeable determination to succeed led her to audition for American Idol, before scoring a spot on the MTV reality show Making The Band, overseen by Diddy aka Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs, where the massively successful girl group Danity Kane was formed in 2005, and signed to Bad Boy Records soon after. The band became the first female group in Billboard history to debut their first two albums at the top of the charts. Yet, after much drama, they disbanded in 2009.

Some may have stopped there, but Dawn’s story was far from over. She would go on to work with Puff again in Dirty Money and recorded the tragically underrated album, Last Train to Paris. When that project was abruptly ended by Puff, she reinvented herself a third time as an independent solo artist in 2013, with a critically hailed trilogy of albums - Goldenheart, Blackheart, and Redemptionheart. This multi-talented artist is not only an incredibly gifted producer, singer, writer, and dancer, who refuses to be limited to one genre, Dawn also works with Adult Swim as an animator, and runs a vegan food truck business in her hometown of New Orleans. Now with a new record deal with Merge Records, Dawn is about to release her hotly anticipated sixth solo album called Second Line: An Electro Revival, out April 30th. This is a story of coming home, to your roots, and to yourself.