August Alsina

August Anthony Alsina Jr. (born 3 September 1992; New Orleans, Louisiana) is an American hip-hop and R&B singer and songwriter.
 

Early Life

Alsina grew up in New Orleans in a family with no particular musical background; his own love of singing was sparked instead by watching Lauryn Hill's performance in the film Sister Act 2. His childhood was marked by hardship: both his father and stepfather struggled with crack cocaine addiction, a battle that eventually claimed his father's life, and his family relocated to Texas following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. In 2011, his older brother was murdered, a tragedy that coincided with Alsina's decision to move to Atlanta, Georgia, to pursue music professionally. He had begun singing at fourteen, initially uploading cover performances to YouTube.

Career

Alsina's early mixtapes, The Product (2012) and The Product 2 (2013), brought him to the attention of Def Jam Recordings, which released his debut EP, Downtown: Life Under the Gun, in 2013. That year, his single "I Luv This Sh*t," featuring Trinidad James, topped Billboard's Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop Airplay chart following a 21-week climb, and he opened for R. Kelly on tour dates the same year.

His debut studio album, Testimony, followed in April 2014, reaching number two on the Billboard 200 and the top ten of the UK R&B chart, and included the single "No Love," featuring Nicki Minaj.

He released a second album, This Thing Called Life, in 2015. Following a lengthy hiatus and his departure from Def Jam, Alsina self-released two further albums, The Product III: State of Emergency (2020) and Myself (2022).

He has been recognised with two BET Awards over the course of his career.

Personal Life

In 2020, Alsina publicly discussed a past relationship with actress Jada Pinkett Smith, a disclosure Pinkett Smith subsequently addressed on her talk show Red Table Talk. He has spoken about being a father to three children.

In 2022, Alsina introduced a boyfriend to the public during the finale of the television series The Surreal Life, describing love that had "showed up... in a new way," and has since spoken openly in interviews about resisting fixed labels for his sexuality, describing his approach to love and identity as fluid rather than categorised.

Alsina has managed a series of health challenges throughout his career. In late 2014, he collapsed onstage in New York City and spent three days in a coma; in May 2015, he revealed he had gone blind in his left eye and was losing vision in his right due to a degenerative eye disease, undergoing surgery in an effort to slow its progression.

In 2017, he disclosed an autoimmune liver disease, which he has said runs in his family, and in 2018 revealed a diagnosis of Guillain-Barré syndrome; a flare-up in 2019 left him temporarily unable to feel his legs and required hospitalisation.

He has continued to speak candidly about his health in the years since, alongside the personal and family hardships that have long shaped his music.