LeahAnn “Lafemmebear” Mitchell has long been featured and praised in the music industry for her talents as a musician, music producer, and sound engineer, having worked with major label studios and more recently as an independent artist under the moniker “Lafemmebear.”

As an up-and-coming producer, Mitchell worked alongside artists including Boyz II Men, Grammy-winners The Jackie Boyz, Eric Dawkins of The Underdogs, and Interscope Records producers from Nelly’s songwriting team. When she came out as a transgender woman in 2013, she was effectively blacklisted from the industry despite her skill and accomplishments, including a 2012 Grammy nomination for album engineering.

This only prompted Mitchell to take her music into her own hands under the name Lafemmebear in 2018. The arrival of her first indie release, Blaq* A Note to the World, showed that her sound has evolved into a genre-blending experience speaking to the trials of Black queer, trans femmes. The music video for the EP single “SHUTUP! (feat. Bella King)” premiered on Billboard.com in March of 2019; she subsequently became the first Black trans woman to headline the state of Utah’s Pride Festival in June, performing original music to an audience of over 60,000. Her words and work have since been featured by The Guardian, GLAAD, Queerty, Out.Tv Euro, Autostraddle, and Billboard once more.

Her first full album, Blaq: the Story of Me, premiered Fall 2019 and is available on all platforms. She is composing, mixing, and sound designing part of the original score for Alice Sheppard and Kinetic Light’s new work WIRED, set to premiere soon. She collaborated with PEG Records, Cody Belew, and Dustin Ransom to co-write and produce the first mainstream Pop-R&B single “What You’re Looking For” for the artist Peppermint (Rupaul’s Drag Race, Head Over Heels original Broadway cast, God Friended Me on CBS), which premiered on Valentine’s Day 2020.