Sheila E., born Sheila Escovedo on December 12, 1957, is a singer, songwriter, and percussionist from Oakland, California. Her honorific title is “The Queen of Percussion”.

The daughter of a Mexican jazz percussionist and Creole/African-American factory worker, Sheila comes from a family of musical royalty – father Pete Escovedo and uncle Coke were members of the Santana band for a time. Her other uncles are Alejandro, who has had a sustained alt-punk career; Javier, who led the early punk pioneer band The Zeros; and Mario, who fronted the 90s group The Dragons and MEX, aka Mario Escovedo Xperience. Sheila’s brothers Juan and Peter Michael are also percussionists, with Peter working on The Wayne Brady Show. Sheila is the goddaughter of Tito Puente, a Latin Jazz pioneer and Spanish Harlem legend.

“Before I had language, I had rhythm,” she wrote in The Beat Of My Own Drum, a 2014 memoir. “I learned it before I learned my mother tongue.” At the age of 20, Sheila became a member of George Duke’s R&B jazz band, and worked with him from 1976 to 1980, during Duke’s early Epic/CBS years. By the age of 26, she had already worked or toured with Marvin Gaye, Herbie Hancock, Diana Ross, and family friend Lionel Richie.

Sheila E. first met Prince at a performance of her father’s in 1978. His first words to her was that he and bassist André Cymone “were just fighting about which one of us would be the first to be your husband.” He promised to make her a member of his band one day. The two eventually began a working relationship in 1984, during the Purple Rain era, Prince’s most successful years, as she sang co-vocals on the successful B-side “Erotic City”. With input and support from Prince, Sheila E. began a solo career by releasing her debut album Sheila E. In The Glamorous Life on June 5, 1984, with the title track, “Oliver’s House”, and “The Belle of St. Mark” as singles. Sheila served as the opening act on the 1984-1985 “The Purple Rain Tour”. Prince almost made good on his promise to marry her, as they became engaged during this period. Banking on the success of the tour and the lead role in the Warner Bros. film Krush Groove, she immediately released her RIAA Gold-certified sophomore follow up, Romance 1600, on August 26, 1985, which was almost completely produced and composed by Sheila except for “A Love Bizarre”, co-written with Prince, and arguably the signature song of her career.

Sheila became Prince’s tour musical director following the dissolve of The Revolution and was featured in the 1987 concert film Sign O' The Times. She released her third eponymous album Sheila E. that year, which included input from Raphael Saadiq, Dwayne Wiggins and Timothy Wiley, fellow Oakland natives who would become the R&B powerhouse band Tony! Toni! Toné!, whom Prince and Warner Bros. passed on signing. Her initial relationship with Prince ended here, writing in her memoirs that “…there are times when it’s too much and you grow apart. It was very difficult and we went through a change and I just had to let everything go. It wasn’t just letting him go and the work go, it was both. The hardest part about it was letting go of my best friend.”

In 1991, a lung collapse and semi-paralysis ended her tour promoting her fourth album Sex Cymbal, leading to poor sales, making it her last LP for a decade and final release under Warner Bros. Records. In the Late 90s, Sheila capitalized on her popularity abroad and led Japanese Pop star Namie Amuro’s live band for a period. She returned Stateside in 1998 to lead the band for the late night show The Magic Hour with Magic Johnson; critics panned the show, but many highlighted her band with positivity. She released two albums, Writes of Passage and Heaven in 2000 and 2001 which garnered little attention. From 2001-2006, she was a member of Beatles percussionist Ringo Starr And His All-Starr Band, a sporadic live supergroup of music stars. In the 90s and 2000s Sheila also collaborated with Gloria Estefan, Beyoncé, and Cyndi Lauper, among others, and toured New Zealand with fellow percussionist Abe Laboriel, Jr. in 2004.

In 2003, Sheila E. reunited with Prince and would perform with him often from then on, including the One Nite Alone…Live! Tour and LP and his 2008 Coachella Music Festival headline. In 2007, she formed an all-female group with fellow Prince associates Kat Dyson, Rhonda Smith and Cassandra O'Neal – C.O.E.D. (Chronicles of Every Diva). That year she also became a judge on Fox’s The Next Great American Band, which lasted a single season. She won Season 3 of the CMT competition show Gone Country in 2009 against the likes of George Clinton and Taylor Dayne. She self-released Icon, her 7th album, in 2013. Following the death of Prince, she led the tribute at the 2016 BET Awards alongside Jerome Benton and the New Power Generation, and released “Girl Meets Boy”, a single in his honor.

Sheila E. has contributed her percussion skills to many films, including Man of Steel, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice, Ride Along 2, and Kung Fu Panda 3.

After enduring sexual abuse as a child from the age of 5, Sheila co-founded the Elevate Hope Foundation – originally known as “Lil' Angel Bunny Foundation” – in 2001, which is “dedicated to providing abused and abandoned children an alternative method of therapy through music and the arts.” She is the biological aunt of actress Nicole Richie, Lionel Richie’s adopted daughter.

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