Aiyana-Lee had been releasing music for years, quietly, steadily, doing the work the way artists are always told it’s supposed to be done. Then 2025 arrived and kicked the door in. Suddenly she wasn’t just dropping singles, but was starring in Highest to Lowest, a Spike Lee joint anchored by Denzel Washington. Not only that, she was responsible for the film’s title track and its end-credit song, effectively singing the movie in and out of existence.
Not a bad way to reintroduce yourself to the world.
Like most things in her life, she says, it didn’t happen the way it happens for everyone else. “He DM’d me on Instagram,” Aiyana-Lee says, still sounding slightly amused by it. Spike Lee had found her through a song she wrote alone in her bedroom — “My Idols Lied to Me” — at a moment when everything else was falling apart. Her record deal had collapsed after the company was sold. “I was on the brink of homelessness,” she says plainly. When the message came in at six in the morning, disbelief came first. “I was like, ‘This is definitely not the real Spike Lee.’”
She checked the verification badge. Assumed it was fake anyway. Woke her mom up. “Girl, go back to sleep,” came the verdict. It was real. They met the same day. He happened to be in Los Angeles. “The rest is history.”
If that sounds cinematic, it’s because it mirrors the movie itself. In Highest to Lowest, Denzel Washington’s King David has a habit of appearing out of nowhere, reshaping lives with a conversation and a gaze. “It felt very parallel to my experience in the music industry,” Aiyana-Lee says. She’d lived that scene before — performing for executives, being evaluated in a room, feeling power tilt. “I got signed that way in one of my first record deals.”
The film doesn’t just brush against those realities; it leans into them. AI, manufactured stars, corporate ideas of what sells versus the messy humanity of songwriting. “Why don’t we look at the heart of humanity and the heart of songwriting?” she asks. “There’s a gap for that too.”
That question isn’t theoretical for her. She grew up surrounded by music history — a mother who’s a multi-platinum songwriter, family ties to The Temptations. The lineage is real, but so is the pressure. Authenticity, in that environment, can feel like something you have to actively protect. For Aiyana-Lee, it was ingrained early. “I was raised to be fearless in the exploration of being myself,” she says.
Songwriting became her diary. That wasn’t romantic. It was survival. “I was severely bullied in school,” she says. “Beaten up. Had to change schools.” She laughs briefly at the memory of being a confident, chubby kid — and how much people seemed to hate that confidence. Those early songs were about experience, not aspiration. “It felt like exploring me.”
Industry polish came later, sometimes unwanted. She learned structure by absorption — by hearing everything growing up — but never believed in rigid rules. “I feel like there are no rules in music,” she says. “It should evolve.” That belief shows up clearly in the Highest to Lowest title track. Spike Lee gave her a directive that went against pop instinct: no repeated chorus lyrics. “We’re going to change the lyrics every single time,” he told her.
It meant sharpening the pen. Ten versions later, the song landed. “It gave me space to tell the story in a really full way,” Aiyana-Lee says. Her mother even entered the process, writing the initial chords. Collaboration, in this case, didn’t dilute the voice, but amplified it.
Not every song made the cut. “There's an album in my computer right now,” she says of the rejected tracks. Ballads, slower, heavier. “They’re really good songs. Just not fitting for that scene in that moment.” File them under music inspired by the movie, the kind of thing soundtracks used to sneak out alongside the main release.
Then there’s “City of Lies,” the other song she released this year — less cinematic, more confrontational. A line about telling a manager to get lost landed hard. Aiyana-Lee debated releasing it. “That’s why I should release it, isn’t it?” she realized. The song closed a chapter, explained a disappearance, and documented what happens behind the curtain. “It wasn’t for lack of music,” she says. “It was the powers that be.”
What changed with Spike Lee wasn’t just opportunity; it was belief. “It was the first time someone really believed in me,” she says. Not as a product. Not as a face. “Your voice matters.” That affirmation sits at the center of everything she’s doing now.
Acting is no longer a side quest. “I got the bug,” she says. Music isn’t going anywhere either. A project is planned for this year. It’s still a small operation — just her and her mom — but the momentum feels real. Earned. Hard-fought.
For an artist who spent years being told where her place was, Aiyana-Lee now seems determined to define it herself, verse by verse, chorus by chorus, even when the chorus refuses to repeat itself.
Watch the full interview above and then check out the trailer below.
