Millie Jackson

Mildred Virginia Jackson (born July 15, 1944), better known as Millie Jackson, is an African-American R&B and soul singer-songwriter and actress whose music has also explored disco, hip-hop, pop, rock and even country. Her powerful vocal performances are also distinguished by long, humorous, and explicit spoken sections in her music; her work from the 1970s and 1980s, is often cited as an influence on female rappers. She is the mother of contemporary R&B singer, Keisha Jackson.

Born in the small town of Thompson, Georgia, Jackson was the daughter of a sharecropper. Jackson's mother died while she was still a child, and subsequently, she and her father moved to Newark, New Jersey. By the time she was in her mid-teens, she moved to Brooklyn, New York, and lived with an aunt. Jackson occasionally worked as a model for magazines like Jive and Sepia.