Nikki Y

In her relatively young career, Nikki Y has worked with a stunning assortment of music legends—Quincy Jones, Herbie Hancock, Stevie Wonder. Though these collaborations come with bragging rights, Nikki instead talks about a lesser-known man who gave her a break. “My dad. He had this band called Past Their Prime Time Players,” says the Montreal native, raised on The Beatles and Motown. “It was basically a bunch of middle-aged men jamming, and I would sing songs with them.” The basement her stage, the 10-year-old would take on weighty classics such as Aretha Franklin’s “Chain of Fools.”