Bringing a sense of culture and self reliance with her to Indiana, and eventually to college at Northwestern University where she majored in musical theater and communications, Heather Headley has stood out amongst the crowd in the music community.

In 1997 Disney recruited her for the role of Nala in the history-making debut of the Tony Award winning musical, The Lion King, following that up with the marquee role in the Elton John/Tim Rice show Aida, and Heather's show business career was cemented. A 2000 Tony Award for her star-making performance in the show affirmed her power-vocalist pedigree, and soon RCA came a-knocking. 'This Is Who I Am' was released in 2002, achieving gold status, and earning Heather two Soul Train Awards, for Best R&B Soul Album of The Year and Best Solo R&B/Soul New Artist Award. She also received dual nods from both the BET Awards and NAACP Awards, as well as earning two Grammy nominations for Best New Artist and Best R&B Vocalist.

Even with all the accolades, Heather refuses to play the expectations games regarding her sophomore effort, 'In My Mind.' "We just set out to make the best record we could," she says. "I wanted to do some different things musically on this one, and I think we did that. I still have so much to learn about recording, about life, really. I guess the great thing about this album for me is that they converged so naturally. It's like the song "Rain" I did with Shaggy, and co-wrote with Tony Kelly. When we wrote and recorded this song it was in the midst of one of last year's terrible hurricanes. I had just gotten married and wanted to write a song about love; the idea of rain just captured it. Rain can be like love. Your husband's love. Love for your children, your family. It showers down. It's no mystery that water and air take up wherever there is a void. I want to be loved like that. We all do. To be able to write a song with that kind of message, that hopefully will touch other people . . . it's a dream come true."