Najee was born Jerome Najee Rasheed on November 4, 1957, on the lower west side of Manhattan, and spent his teenage years in Queens. His father died when he was young, and his mother, Mary Richards, raised him and his siblings. Her Miles Davis records were among the first jazz he heard. He started on clarinet in grade school at eight, already wanting a saxophone, and in high school joined Jazzmobile, the community program co-founded by pianist Billy Taylor, where he studied tenor saxophone and flute under Jimmy Heath, Frank Foster and Ernie Wilkins. At sixteen he took flute lessons at the Manhattan School of Music Preparatory Division with Harold Jones, a flutist of the New York Philharmonic.

After high school he spent two years with a New York band called Area Code on a USO tour of military bases in Europe, Iceland, Greenland, Central America, the Caribbean and the United States, then went on the road in the summer of 1978 with Ben E. King. He and his brother Fareed, a guitarist and future producer of many of his records, studied for two semesters at Bronx Community College under Valerie Capers, and both were then admitted to the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. Najee majored in performance and composition, studied with the clarinetist Joe Allard, and played in the conservatory's big bands led by George Russell and Jaki Byard. Back in New York in the early 1980s, the brothers toured in 1983 with Chaka Khan. Najee also worked as a session and club player around the city and, by his own account, was known as someone who could handle keyboards as well as horns.

The break came through his brother's connections to Hush Productions, the production and management company behind Freddie Jackson, Melba Moore, Kashif and Meli'sa Morgan. A Hush executive heard Najee play saxophone on a Meli'sa Morgan session and soon had a deal for him with Capitol and EMI. Najee's Theme (1986) was, in Najee's own description, largely a set of demos made on a budget of about $60,000, produced with Charles Elgart and Rahni Song, and he has said he treated it as an R&B record that used the soprano saxophone as a singing voice rather than as a jazz album. It reached No. 1 on Billboard's Contemporary Jazz Albums chart, No. 12 on the R&B albums chart and No. 56 on the Billboard 200, and produced four R&B chart singles, among them a version of Anita Baker's "Sweet Love." The album was certified gold, which he recalls happening within about three months. It earned him a Grammy nomination for Best R&B Instrumental Performance at the 1988 ceremony, in a category won by David Sanborn for "Chicago Song." He then toured as an opening act for Freddie Jackson.

Three more albums for EMI followed. Day by Day (1988) was produced by several hands, including Barry Eastmond. Tokyo Blue (1990), produced by Fareed, topped the contemporary jazz chart and is reported gold by AllMusic; its single "I'll Be Good to You," with Vesta Williams, reached No. 9 on the R&B singles chart. Just an Illusion (1992) drew on producers including Arif Mardin, George Duke, Fareed and Marcus Miller, and included a version of Color Me Badd's "I Adore Mi Amor." Najee won the Soul Train Music Award for Best Jazz Artist in 1991 and 1993.

The mid-1990s put him alongside the fusion and studio generation as much as the smooth-jazz radio crowd. In 1994 he joined Stanley Clarke for the all-star concert album Live at the Greek with Billy Cobham, Larry Carlton and keyboardist Deron Johnson, playing alto, soprano and tenor saxophone, flute and a WX-7 wind controller on a set that included Miles Davis's "All Blues" and Charles Mingus's "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat." Around the same time he made guest appearances with Quincy Jones at the Montreux Jazz Festival. Share My World (1994) reached No. 2 on the contemporary jazz chart. Najee Plays Songs from the Key of Life (1995), his tribute to Stevie Wonder, was produced by George Duke and brought in Herbie Hancock, Stanley Clarke, Paul Jackson Jr., Sheila E. and Patrice Rushen. He appeared on Urban Knights II (1997), the GRP all-star album of the Ramsey Lewis-led Urban Knights, produced by Maurice White, alongside saxophonist Gerald Albright, and Morning Tenderness (1998) went to No. 1 on the contemporary jazz chart, followed by a first best-of collection on Blue Note. In 1998 he performed at a birthday celebration for Nelson Mandela in South Africa, on a bill with Stevie Wonder and Chaka Khan, and toured for the USO again in the Mediterranean.

In the early 2000s Najee toured with Prince and the New Power Generation. Prince's own discography credits him on saxophone and flute on The Rainbow Children (2001) and on saxophone, alongside Maceo Parker and Candy Dulfer, on the live set One Nite Alone... Live! (2002). His own albums continued on a steady schedule: Embrace (2003, with Roy Ayers and BeBe Winans, and a track dedicated to Grover Washington Jr.), then My Point of View (2005, Heads Up), which debuted at No. 1 on the contemporary jazz chart and was followed in 2006 by an NAACP Image Award for Best Jazz Artist. Rising Sun (2007) featured singer Phil Perry and a track titled "Moody's Mood for Love"; Mind Over Matter (2009) brought in singer Eric Benét and producer Jeff Lorber and yielded "Sweet Summer Nights," a No. 1 on a Billboard jazz chart.

From 2012 he recorded for Shanachie: The Smooth Side of Soul (2012), The Morning After (A Musical Love Journey) (2013), which earned an NAACP Image Award nomination for Outstanding Jazz Album and a Soul Train Music Award nomination in 2014, and You, Me and Forever (2015), which he co-produced. Poetry in Motion (2017) marked his thirtieth year as a recording artist and was dedicated to the memory of Prince and Al Jarreau. Center of the Heart (2019) topped the contemporary jazz chart and Savoir Faire followed in 2022. His 2025 album, Under the Moon, Over the Sky (Blue Horn Creative, August 12, 2025), turns toward Brazilian rhythms and includes a flute-led treatment of Angela Bofill's "Under the Moon and Over the Sky" with Regina Belle singing, plus guests Will Downing and Eric Roberson. His official site lists a 2024 honorary doctorate in humane letters.

He continues to record and tour. His official site lists 2026 dates, the last of them in Atlanta on November 12 and 13 and in Hampton, Virginia on November 15.

Najee's sound is warm, lyrical and melodic, a soprano-saxophone voice in the line of Grover Washington Jr., Ronnie Laws and Stanley Turrentine, and AllMusic calls him one of the most successful and recognizable crossover jazz and R&B performers of his generation. He names John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Yusef Lateef, Joe Henderson and Grover Washington Jr. among his saxophone influences and flutists Hubert Laws and James Galway on flute. Most of his public career has been at the R&B-leaning, radio-friendly end of the music. He has said the debut was an R&B record by intent and that he deliberately held back his playing to suit that audience, and an AllMusic reviewer notes that straight-ahead jazz critics have often dismissed him as a groove-happy lightweight. The jazz-side record is real but modest in volume: a Jazzmobile apprenticeship with Jimmy Heath, Frank Foster and Ernie Wilkins, conservatory work in the big bands of George Russell and Jaki Byard, tenor, alto and flute as the instruments he says he developed on before soprano became his commercial voice, the 1994 Live at the Greek date with Stanley Clarke, Billy Cobham and Larry Carlton, where the repertoire included Miles Davis's "All Blues" and Charles Mingus's "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," a Stevie Wonder tribute produced by George Duke with Herbie Hancock on board, and tracks such as "Moody's Mood for Love" on Rising Sun, which an AllMusic reviewer cited as proof that he is a serious jazz player who also loves commercial R&B. He has also said that a straight-ahead session recorded in 2009 with pianist James Lloyd and students of the Kansas City saxophonist Ahmad Alaadeen was never released, apart from one track, "Jannah," that closes You, Me and Forever. His Prince years and his long list of vocal collaborators, from Chaka Khan and Freddie Jackson to Will Downing and Phil Perry, round out a career that sits between the jazz club and the R&B ballad.