Source: iOne Digital / iOne Digital/Creative Class
Name: Nija Charles
Occupation: Songwriter
Location: Los Angeles
How We Know Her: You don’t know her face, but you sing her songs. The New York University alum has penned hits for Beyonce, Cardi B. and more celebs.
Why We Chose Her: Nija is a music industry icon in the making.
What’s Next: Hits.
IG: @amnija
Some of the most classic R&B and Hip Hop songs of the 2010’s came out between 2016-2018 — and nearly 80% of those hits records were penned by Nija Charles. In her short time working in the music industry, the 21-year old New Jersey native gave us a list of jams so impactful to the culture that it’s hard to name them all. That includes jams like “Love Happy” by Beyonce & Jay-Z and “Ring” by Cardi B & Kehlani. No wonder they call her “Beyonce’s secret weapon”.
It takes a special kind of creativity and talent to scribe songs so deep and meaningful at such a young age. And to think it all started when she was just a baby girl, watching her aunt and uncle experiment with the production software Fruity Loops that also made producers like Mike Will Made It and Metro Boomin superstars.
By the time she was 17, Nija enrolled at New York University’s Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, but her matriculation didn’t last long as her music career began to skyrocket. In 2018 interview with Fader, she revealed:
“I realised that people don’t go on Soundcloud looking for beats — people want to hear songs. I thought that if I sung on my beats, they’d have a better chance of being heard and people would realize that I’m the producer.
But it ended up working in the opposite way: they thought I was the singer. Producers would see the snippets that I’d put up on Instagram and DM me asking if I could topline on their beats, too.”
The rest is songwriting history.
With so much success and respect from industry peers under her belt, things will only get bigger and better for Nija Charles: the young force to be reckoned with.
“Check out the other honorees on iOne Digital’s The Creative Class.”
