Ria Boss Biography: Real Name, Songs, Album and Career

Ria Boss is a Ghanaian-Burkinabé singer, songwriter, producer and multidisciplinary artist whose smoky neo-soul voice turns private feeling into communal theatre. Born Maria Emmanuelle Grace Bossman-Damiba in London and raised in Accra, she built an unusually deep independent catalogue before recording the live album REMEMBER. Her official X profile carries the same “Cat Mama” world across music, visual art and creative-community work.

Breakthrough by Volume: Eleven EPs in Eleven Weeks

Ria Boss did not introduce herself with one cautiously packaged single. In 2018, she created the #THANKGODITSRIA series and released an EP every week for 11 weeks. The run moved between romantic soul, electronic experiments, rap personas and unfiltered interior monologues. Projects including LONECAT, BLOODBATH, SAMPLEPLATE, UNDERWATER and BORNDAY presented not a fixed brand, but a set of artistic rooms listeners could enter.

The scale mattered because independent artists often choose between frequent visibility and careful world-building. Ria Boss attempted both. The NATIVE’s 2020 profile highlighted the feat and enduring songs including “Holding Hands in Public” and “Equal.”

One song travelled farther than the series initially suggested. “Intro,” from BORNDAY, appeared in episode seven of Michaela Coel’s HBO and BBC series I May Destroy You in 2020. Ria Boss had produced, mixed and mastered the track herself. The placement gave an intimate Accra-made recording an international screen context without changing its private scale.

Formative Life: London Birth, Accra Roots and Harlem Courage

Maria Emmanuelle Grace Bossman-Damiba was born in London and spent most of her childhood in Accra. She lived largely with her grandmother and watched her mother build a demanding professional life. The two women supplied emotional grounding and a musical environment that treated creativity as something worth developing.

Piano lessons began around age nine or ten. Choir, ballet and tap followed, giving her early training across sound and movement. Singing alone in public was harder. In a detailed early-career interview, she remembered being shy even after school talent shows and singing competitions. Her mother’s description of her voice as “true” made her pay closer attention to what it could become.