Esperanza Spalding was born October 18, 1984, and grew up in a single-parent household in Portland, Oregon. Her first musical inspiration came at age four, watching Yo-Yo Ma play classical cello on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, and she first drew acclaim as a child violinist before discovering the upright bass as a teenager. She attended Berklee College of Music and became the school's youngest teacher at age twenty; she later became a professor at Harvard University in 2017.

Her music blends jazz with blues, hip-hop, funk, and Brazilian and Argentine folk traditions alongside classical chamber influences. Her albums Junjo and Esperanza topped the contemporary jazz charts, and Chamber Music Society (2011) made her the best-selling contemporary jazz artist in the world. In 2011 she became the first jazz musician ever to win the Grammy Award for Best New Artist, beating pop nominees including Justin Bieber and Drake. She won a Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Album for Radio Music Society, three more Grammys in 2013 and 2014 (one shared with her mentor, Portland trumpeter Thara Memory), further wins in 2020 and 2022, and the Best Instrumental Album Grammy in 2023.

Later releases include Emily's D+Evolution (2016), a prog-rock-infused concept album, and Twelve Little Spells (2019), a Grammy-nominated concept album with twelve songs each inspired by a different part of the body.

Spalding's fusion of upright-bass-centered jazz with hip-hop, funk, and Afro-Latin folk traditions, delivered through her own vocals as bandleader-composer, established her as one of the defining crossover figures of 21st-century jazz, and her landmark 2011 Grammy win for Best New Artist marked one of the rare moments a jazz musician broke into the mainstream pop conversation.