The singer whose stage name is her own nickname spelled backwards

Her name is a puzzle with a heartbreaking answer. Abigail Elizabeth Smith, from West Memphis, Arkansas, performs as Yebba, which is her childhood nickname Abbey written backwards, a name chosen to honor her mother, who always called her by it.

She was first noticed through her YouTube channel, and then through a backing vocal on Chance the Rapper's Saturday Night Live performance of “Same Drugs” in 2016. A year later, a Sofar Sounds performance of “My Mind,” written and sung about a week before her mother died, made Ed Sheeran cry, and his label signed her. She has said she grew up in her father's church, beside her mother and behind her father's organ, and that church became the only place she could turn to after her mother's death. That feeling shaped her debut single, “Evergreen.”

Collaborations followed quickly: Sam Smith's “No Peace,” three songs on Mark Ronson's Late Night Feelings, and a feature on Rudimental's “They Don't Care About Us.” In 2019 she won a Grammy for Best Traditional R&B Performance for her part in PJ Morton's cover of “How Deep Is Your Love.” That same year she joined Ed Sheeran on “Best Part of Me” from his No.6 Collaborations Project, her first charted release, peaking at 99 in the US.

She signed to RCA in 2020, and her debut album Dawn arrived in September 2021 with guests A$AP Rocky and Smino. A week earlier she had appeared on Drake's Certified Lover Boy with “Yebba's Heartbreak.” Her second album, Jean, followed in March 2026 with fourteen tracks. Along the way she has spoken up for mental health awareness, turning a very private loss into something that others can hear.