Aiyana-Lee on Her Path From Viral Singer to ‘Highest 2 Lowest’ Scene-Stealer

In the era of social media, one direct message changed everything for Aiyana-Lee.

The up-and-coming singer, born Aiyana-Lee Anderson, was once struggling financially and facing homelessness. After getting a DM from Spike Lee, she landed a role in the director’s film Highest 2 Lowest, received a 2026 NAACP Image Award nomination, and is fielding new offers for work.

Known to her followers simply as Aiyana-Lee, the singer-songwriter credits the director with opening the door to new opportunities.

“I’m just endlessly grateful to Spike for believing in me,” she said in a recent interview with Urban Hollywood 411.

We spoke with the powerhouse vocalist at length via Zoom. There was no ego, just pure joy over the attention coming her way after writing the title track for Highest 2 Lowest.

The Apple Original Films and A24 release opened in August 2025. Denzel Washington leads the cast as music executive David King, whose son is kidnapped in a plot orchestrated by a struggling rapper played by A$AP Rocky.

At the end of the film, a singer named “Sula” performs a soulful ballad for King and his family in hopes of landing a recording contract. That singer is Aiyana-Lee.

“Being on set with Denzel Washington, it’s been a really wild ride,” she said.

Aiyana-Lee, 25, grew up in London. But as a biracial singer drawn to soul music, she dreamed of a career in the U.S., where there would be more opportunities for an artist of color.

“I drove my mom nuts,” she said. “I wanted to be an artist. I wanted to do it on a very big scale.”

Her mother, Daciana-Nicole Anderson, is a platinum-selling songwriter. But the single mom and daughter were by no means wealthy. Then a teenager, Aiyana-Lee pestered her mom about moving to Los Angeles, although money was tight.

“My mom sacrificed her life and everything she built in England to come here and give me that opportunity to chase my dreams on that level,” Aiyana-Lee said. “We ended up losing our house out there, and a lot of things, and [were] almost homeless before this.”

For years, it looked like their gamble would never pay off. Though frustrated, Aiyana-Lee told us she refused to give up. She continued to write new music and used social media to share her work. One of her songs eventually took off.

“I wrote a song called ‘My Idols Lied to Me.’ This was after I had kind of been through quite a wild roller coaster [ride]. My old label had gotten sold. I was completely broke,” she said.

She developed a personal marketing strategy by “making six different TikTok accounts and posting [Instagram] Reels three times a day.”

“My Idols Lied to Me” suddenly became a hit on social media.

“It just was going incredibly viral, 20 million views per post, which was just insanity. I went from 60,000 followers to half a million,” she said.

Someone with influence took notice.

“The song caught Spike Lee’s attention. He sent me a DM on Instagram, and he said, ‘This is the real Spike Lee.’ Honestly, I did not believe it,” she recalled. “He sent me a whole long paragraph of how he had listened to my discography, how he discovered me and, yeah, it completely changed my life.”

She met with the Oscar-winning filmmaker that day in Los Angeles about writing a song for a remake he was making of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 Japanese film High and Low.

After years of hardship, that one DM turned everything around. Aiyana-Lee and her mom — who is her creative partner — started working on music for the film.

“I wouldn’t change anything,” she said. “You have to go through the hardships to have a story and here I am in Los Angeles, Sunny Cali.”

That story now includes a chapter about a Spike Lee Joint and new work coming her way.

“I’m working on a lot of music,” she said. “I write songs every day… I’ve got notebooks on notebooks like throughout my room. There will be a lot of music. There will be a lot of projects this year, and I’m excited to share them with everyone.”

You can watch the music video for “Highest 2 Lowest,” which Spike Lee directed, on A24’s YouTube page.