Andra Day

CTL-E-6246 · Person · musician · 1984–present

STRONG EVIDENCE evidence grade — master store (canonical CSV)

VERIFIED evidence grade — build store (JSON graph)

Combined Graph record U-03585 · provenance: canonical master store (CSV), record CTL-P-1443 + build store (JSON graph), record CTL-E-6246. Master record source: CTL intake 2026-10-17 — Soul Train missing-winner seeding from Phase C recovery notes; wins confirmed against the fetched per-year winners lists.

Cassandra Monique Batie, known as Andra Day, is an American R&B singer, songwriter, and actress born on December 30, 1984. She grew up in San Diego, began singing at the First United Methodist Church in Chula Vista, and at twelve encountered jazz vocalists Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dinah Washington. In 2010 Stevie Wonder's then wife, Kai Millard, brought a performance by Day to Wonder's attention; Wonder connected her with producer Adrian Gurvitz, who co-produced her debut album. Her debut album, Cheers to the Fall, was released in 2015. Its single "Rise Up" reached number 10 on Billboard's Hot R&B Songs chart, the album reached number 48 on the Billboard 200, and both earned Grammy nominations at the 58th Grammy Awards. In 2017 she recorded "Stand Up for Something" with Common for the film Marshall, nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. Day made her acting debut portraying Billie Holiday in Lee Daniels's The United States vs. Billie Holiday (2021), winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in a drama and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. The film's soundtrack won the Grammy Award for Best Compilation Soundtrack for Visual Media. She performed at Super Bowl LVIII in 2024; her album CASSANDRA (cherith) appeared that year.

The record

• Also known as: Cassandra Monique Batie
• Role(s): recording artist

Notes

Staged 2026-10-16 under CTL-GOV-006 (Scan Tail Wave 7 — 747 Program, FINAL Wave 13; seventh Scan Tail packet at the founder's 40-record size). Gate A (2026-10-16): Gate A CLEAR (hand-checked 2026-10-16): no Andra Day entity, alias, or variant in the live graph (3,910 entities). ID CTL-E-6246 free at staging. Supply: 747 Supply Ledger — Tier 4 corpus scan tail, corpus-gap-candidates-2026-10-15.json ranked #2704. The scan supplied the name string only; every fact is sourced under CTL-GOV-004. SCOPE GATE: Black American R&B singer and actress whose signature song and whose portrayal of Billie Holiday place her inside the Black music and screen record this graph documents. Vital status: LIVING — photographed at the 2025 New York Film Festival and credited on an August 2025 collaboration, per the opened Wikipedia record (accessed 2026-10-16); the Recording Academy artist record is current. STATISTICS — Recording Academy artist record (accessed 2026-10-16): 1 Grammy win, 3 nominations in the page header; Rise Up No. 10 on Billboard's Hot R&B Songs chart; Cheers To The Fall No. 48 on the Billboard 200. LA Phil (accessed 2026-10-16) gives Rise Up 1 billion streams and an RIAA triple-platinum certification. CONFLICT SHOWN, NOT BLENDED: GRAMMY.com gives her birthplace as San Diego, California, while Wikipedia gives Edmonds, Washington, with San Diego as her origin; the description therefore states only that she grew up in San Diego. MEDIA: photo HELD (HELD — candidate: the 2025 New York Film Festival photograph of Day carried on her Wikipedia page; no file page was read at file level and NO license is claimed — PHOTO-001 verification deferred. — named candidate only; file-level rights verification per CTL-PHOTO-001 still required; no license claimed); chart per media_spec (coordinator builds the CTL chart from this record's sourced facts); video HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map (shorts-link-map-2026-10-15.json, 233 rows, checked by name and variants, 2026-10-16); no near-miss title found.); audio HELD (no rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged); map N/A (person record). MEDIA LAYER (staged 2026-10-16; full per-asset PHOTO-001 records + embed specs in the packet's staged JSON, Drive packet folder): map = N/A (Person records carry no map slot.) | visual_assets = HELD: | chart = FILLED (Created for this packet (CTL graphic, CTL-PHOTO-001 lane) from the record's sourced facts.) | video = HELD (No matching-entity CTL Short in the Shorts Link Map (shorts-link-map-2026-10-15.json, 233 rows, checked by nam) | audio = HELD (No rights-cleared matching-entity audio staged; audio slot held pending a CTL-PHOTO-001-consistent rights basi)

Relationships

• Billie Holiday — related to
  Day portrayed Billie Holiday (CTL-E-1450) in the 2021 film The United States vs. Billie Holiday, winning a Golden Globe for the portrayal; related_to runs Person→Person per the schema matrix.
• Common — collaborated with
  Day recorded 'Stand Up for Something' with Common (CTL-E-0056) for the film Marshall (2017) and performed it with him at the 90th Academy Awards.
• Soul Train Music Awards 2016 — honored by
  STRONG EVIDENCE
• Stevie Wonder — collaborated with
  Day appeared alongside Stevie Wonder (CTL-E-4394) in a 2015 Apple TV advertisement in which the two sang Wonder's 'Someday at Christmas,' after Wonder connected her with her debut producer.

Sources

• Recording Academy / GRAMMY.com, Andra Day artist record (accessed 2026-10-16) — born Cassandra Monique Batie Dec. 30, 1984, in San Diego per this source; Rise Up No. 10 Billboard Hot R&B Songs, Cheers To The Fall No. 48 Billboard 200; 2016 nominations for Rise Up and Cheers To The Fall; soundtrack win at the 64th Grammy Awards; Stevie Wonder linked Day with producer Adrian Gurvitz — https://www.grammy.com/artists/andra-day/18980/ (primary source · build store)
• LA Phil, Andra Day artist page (accessed 2026-10-16) — debut album Cheers to the Fall (2015); Rise Up at 1 billion streams and RIAA triple-platinum per this source; 2021 portrayal of Billie Holiday in Lee Daniels's The United States vs. Billie Holiday, Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama and an Academy Award nomination — https://www.laphil.com/musicdb/artists/7805/andra-day (primary source · build store)
• Wikipedia, Andra Day (accessed 2026-10-16) — born Dec. 30, 1984, Edmonds, Washington, origin San Diego; sang at First United Methodist Church, Chula Vista; at 12 introduced to Holiday, Fitzgerald and Washington; Stand Up for Something with Common nominated for Best Original Song; Super Bowl LVIII performance 2024; CASSANDRA (cherith) (2024); acting credits through 2025 — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andra_Day (build store)
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Soul_Train_Music_Awards (verification source · master store)

Evidence note (master store)

Won The Ashford & Simpson Songwriter's Award at the Soul Train Music Awards 2016 — per the published Soul Train Music Awards winners lists (per-year lists fetched in full during recovery Phase C, 2026-10-17, and re-fetched at intake, 2026-10-17)

More person records

• Gene Hunt
• Gene Upshaw
• Genesis Owusu
• Geneva Smitherman
• Geoffrey Holder
• George Benson

Browse the full directory: all entity records

Record CTL-E-6246 · Combined Graph record U-03585 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · 4 sources · 4 mapped relationships.
Directory: all entity records · the knowledge graph

Researched and maintained by the CultureTechLens research program · CultureTechLens Combined Graph, Release 2026-11-04. Corrections are public: the corrections log.

Cite this record

Citation guidance for teachers, journalists, and funders: How to Cite Us.

From the Archive

The archive in pictures

The people, places, and institutions this work documents. Photographs from the CultureTechLens research record — rights-cleared, credited, and cited like everything else here.