Bria Valente

Breathy R&B vocalist Bria Valente, a Minneapolis, MN native born Brenda Fuentes, had been a background dancer for Usher and Prince prior to contributing vocals to the latter's 2007 album, Planet Earth. In 2009, Prince and Valente recorded Elixer, a set of relaxed but mostly steamy R&B spurred in part by the absence of new material from Sade. Unsurprisingly, Prince's fingerprints were all over the album, and he bundled it with his own Lotusflow3r and MPLSound as a three-disc package released in late March of 2009. ~ Andy Kellman