Candace Wakefield is a five-time Grammy-winning vocalist, songwriter, and producer from Inglewood, California, whose voice has appeared on some of the most influential records of the past decade. She began her career singing background for Omarion and Marques Houston, later touring internationally with artists like Nicki Minaj, Ciara, Kelly Price, and AI. Her vocals feature prominently on Kendrick Lamar’s “Alright” and “i,” and her writing credits span TLC’s Billboard-topping final album, collaborations with Faith Evans and The Notorious B.I.G., and music for television projects such as Nickelodeon’s Little Ballers Indiana.
In our conversation, Candace — who believes that “everybody has a gift and a purpose” — let us step into the spaces where her music starts, revealing how she turns grief into clarity, faith into momentum, and a simple car seat into the place where her next chapter begins.
Candace Wakefield… She's a supastar! (laughs). She's a singer, a songwriter, a producer, a friend, a lover, a beautiful spirit… and just an all-around creative from Inglewood, California, born and raised.
I started growing up singing, my whole entire family sings. My grandmother is one of my biggest inspirations. She is a great singer-songwriter who wrote for a lot of different artists in the industry, and my mother as well. I'm just carrying the torch. This is a gift that was given to me — I didn't ask for it, but I'm so grateful for it. It has allowed me to travel and work with different artists all across the world.
So that is who Candace Wakefield is. She is love and light.
It was tough out here, I'm not gonna lie. I grew up in the hood. I grew up around a lot of gang violence and different things like that, but what it really showed me was never to be that way. You can totally stand out. You might see a lot of violence, but that doesn't mean you have to commit violence. You do the exact opposite, because you want to be able to have something to live for.
Growing up in the hood, you might feel like you'll never get out, you may feel like your dreams are out of reach because of where you're from, but that's not true. I walk by faith. Any time you're walking by faith, that means you have to take the actions of that faith in order for it to happen.
I treasure all of them, but the biggest gift to me is my voice. Having the voice to be able to sing to millions of people all over the world that I’ll probably never meet, never get a chance to perform for in person.
The biggest thing, aside from the Grammys, aside from the NAACP Awards that I’ve won, BET Awards — all of that is beautiful, but it would not have happened if I did not have the gift to sing first. So it is my voice. That is the biggest, biggest award for me.
Absolutely. Because I didn’t learn how to do this. It was natural. One day I found out I could sing as a four-year-old little girl.
I just started singing, and what goes in wants to come out — hearing my grandmother, hearing my mother. I grew up in church singing in choirs and different things like that. So through the years, my voice has been trained because I’ve just used it, just by using it, and I fell in love with it.
So I would definitely say that it's a gift from God. Everybody has a gift, everybody has a purpose, and I definitely know mine.
These two personalities go hand in hand, but it depends on what I'm writing about.
When writing for other artists, you have to write based on what they're going through. You don't ever want to confuse the two and try to give other artists your own feelings. You want to dig into what they're feeling so they can relate to the lyrics they'll be singing, so that whatever they're emoting, their audience will feel it.
But when I write for myself, it's more heartfelt. I feel it because I'm being honest. Be honest about what you're feeling so the next person feeling the same thing won't be afraid to show that.
My mom always used to say, "Be careful what you say. What goes in must come out." You're manifesting everything that you say. For me, I'm positive, I'm uplifting. Even though I have my dark days and my dark nights, God gives me music to uplift me.
So the way that I write for myself is based on what I'm dealing with. I'm being vulnerable, I'm being open about the situation, but I'm turning a negative into a positive. And I can also do that for other artists as well.
Positivity. Everybody seemed to love me. They all said I had great characteristics. I was fun, I was loving. I don’t try to exude that, it's natural. The way I was raised... My mother was such a loving individual, rest in peace. My grandmother was such a loving individual, rest in peace. My father is so loving. My entire family, my aunts, my sisters — because of how we were raised, that is what I exude.
Like I said, what goes in must come out. My mother and my father instilled love and kindness and joy into me. That's what I saw growing up. So I have no choice but to exude those same things.
It gave me privacy. It gave me a lot of joy, a lot of sadness. A lot of different things, because I've been through so much with that car, and I still have that car. Sixteen years!
When I was living with my parents, I didn’t always have a place to record. I didn’t always have money to pay for a studio or an engineer. So I always say, as an artist, there are no excuses. Don’t wait for nobody else to get done what you need to get done. Figure it out. So that’s exactly what I did. I took my car and I made it my personal space, my studio.
I was out there until the battery died, or I would try to hurry into the house, charge it really quick, then come back outside and keep recording for a few hours. It became a personal space. It became a refuge for me. It was my own space, it was what I owned.I didn’t have anybody telling me to get out of the car and leave the studio at a certain time. Once I learned to engineer myself, you couldn’t tell me nothing. I was doing songs back to back to back.
I haven’t even introduced it to the world yet, so you’ll be the first to know. My single Pray for Me is out right now, but I have an album that’s going to follow it. It’s in the mixing and mastering process. Once that’s done, I’ll know better when it’ll be ready for release. Definitely next year. Not a month yet, but 2026 for sure.
I’m thinking about naming it The Pray for Me or Taking Chances on Myself, because all of the songs are based around that — around the fact that I’m out here trying. And I don’t want to say “trying” because trying is doing. If you’re trying, then you are doing.I’m dealing with a lot of grieving — my mother, my best friend, different family members and friends who have passed. It put me in a place of darkness where I didn’t want to work anymore, especially after losing my mother, who was my biggest cheerleader.
But I know she wouldn’t want me to give up. So I told God, “You’ve got to be writing these songs because I don’t even know how I’m coming up with these lyrics in the dark place I’m in mentally.” But God always gives me songs to encourage myself.
I produced and wrote the entire thing, and I’m excited that I’m in a space in my life where I can do this to inspire others and let people know: it might be dark, you might be down, you might feel low, but you can get through this.
I heard about ISINA through Trackhead, Raheem Norris. He’s a great friend of mine who is always so amazing with connecting artists with the right platforms they need to shine.
He introduced me to you guys, and you were so amazing, so loving, so kind when I showed up. You all loved my music, you were very supportive, and it was a match made in heaven. (laughs)
Letting myself out there. Because no one will know that you're talented unless you showcase that you're talented. I’ve done a lot of showcases, a lot of reaching out to different labels.
Social media is our stage. You have a platform to put yourself on and showcase yourself on. You see so many people making money off these platforms. You cannot be afraid.
If you're a singer, sing. Do cover songs. Start with cover songs.
If you're a songwriter, start with pure songs, put your songs out there, record yourself.
You don’t always need a studio. You don’t always need somebody holding a camera for you. A lot of the videos you see, people are holding the cameras themselves. We have so many tools out there. There are no excuses for us.