Erika "Reka" Griggs was born in Euclid, Ohio October 11th 1991. Reka faced a lot of discouragement from a young age. Starting with her music teacher in kindergarten who told her she couldn't sing and that her voice was horrible, to the 6th grade bullies who made a haters club against her because of her having crowds of kids who used to crowd around her just to hear her sing. But none of these things discouraged Reka and she kept going. She started with Cleveland's program "Showagon" which performed all around the city at different festivals and events. By 5th grade she was accepted into "The Singing Angels", a professional children's choir. They performed all over the country, and often appeared on the news, at colleges, and even for the professional Nutcracker Ballet. Unfortunately, at the age of 11 was when Reka's personal problems began to arise at home from verbal and physical abuse brought on by her stepfather, a mother who didn't believe her and her biological father who was absent in her life due to a prison sentence for conspiracy to murder. She started running away from ages 11 to 16, where she got exposed to life in the streets. Her mother often sent her to jail facilities, where she spent her time perfecting her songwriting. She started recording at age 15 where she made her 1st popular song "Lust Thang" . At age 17 she recorded her smash hit "Sideline Girl" that had the whole city buzzing and over 3,000,000.00 views on Youtube.