Grammy winners Aura Valentina Simmons, 8, and her father, Harold Simmons II, sing throughout a morning apply session of their dwelling recording area earlier than she goes to highschool in Charles County, Maryland. They go by the stage names Aura V and Fyütch.
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Aura Valentina Simmons, aka Aura V, stands out as the youngest-ever individually named Grammy winner, however in her third-grade classroom, she makes use of the identical blocks to determine fractions as everybody else.
“I do not actually learn about Grammys,” Pragat Patel, Aura’s desk mate, mentioned with a shrug this week.
“That is the vitality I like — chill,” Aura mentioned, laughing.
Within the classroom, adorned with hand-drawn posters and colourful, massive block letters, the actual clout is victory within the on-line fraction sport 99math.
In that realm, Pragat often triumphs over Aura. However within the entrance pocket of his blue-and-white shark backpack, beneath tissues and a few Pokémon playing cards, Pragat carries a signed autograph from Aura. He plans to place it in his room.
Aura locations fraction blocks on the whiteboard in her third-grade class.
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Aura and her dad, Harold Simmons II, who makes use of the stage identify Fyütch, gained music’s largest prize in February. Their album, Concord, gained the Grammy for greatest youngsters’s music album. Earlier than Aura’s win, Beyoncé and Jay-Z’s daughter Blue Ivy Carter had been the youngest particular person Grammy winner.
“I’d say it is the largest expertise I’ve ever had in my complete complete life to this point,” 8-year-old Aura mentioned.
The 13 songs, which took over two years to jot down and file, comply with themes of affection, positivity and inclusion. In “I Am Love, I Am Mild,” Aura sings, “I really like myself, I really like me.”
“I prefer to sing about that as a result of it is empowering,” Aura mentioned. “It provides hope to individuals.”
Zaiya Willis agrees. Sitting just a few desks away from Aura, Zaiya is Aura’s greatest pal and frequent winner of the 99math sport.
Aura sits subsequent to her desk mate, Pragat Patel, who often beats her in a web based fraction sport.
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“[Aura] impressed me to construct my very own desires and comply with them,” she mentioned. Zaiya’s dream is to be an engineer, however after the 8-year-old noticed a TikTok of Aura successful the Grammy, she added successful that accolade to her record of aspirations.
Accepting a Grammy Award: “Someone, pinch me”
Earlier than heading to highschool on a latest Tuesday, Aura and her father, sporting matching pops of yellow, practiced in a basement studio at their dwelling in Charles County, Maryland. Aura stays with Simmons throughout the week as a result of he has a extra versatile schedule than her mother, who’s a trainer.
Aura pulled out a violin whereas Simmons warmed up on the piano. Behind them, a 2025 Lollapalooza poster with their names subsequent to Olivia Rodrigo and Tyler, The Creator held on the wall. To the appropriate, the envelope from their Grammy win sat on a shelf.
The pair fell into excellent sync and belted out their album’s title observe, “Concord.”
Aura takes out her violin to apply earlier than faculty.
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“I kinda knew it was gonna occur,” Aura mentioned about their Grammy win.
Aura wore a gold headband and yellow and inexperienced beads in her hair to match her yellow costume. She sat on a sofa within the studio, and he or she slapped a pillow with pleasure as she talked. The beads clacked as she moved her head.
“I am identical to, ‘We did it. We simply did this,'” Aura mentioned, remembering being onstage. “‘Is that this a dream? Someone, pinch me.'”
On the crimson carpet in Los Angeles in February, Aura and Simmons additionally wore matching colours — this time, lavender. Aura mentioned her fluffy skirt and matching sparkly purse obtained a lot of consideration.
“Aura was the princess of the Grammys,” Simmons mentioned.
Simmons mentioned he was “freaking out” earlier than the announcement, however Aura had a distinct concern.
“‘Are you able to get me some popcorn?'” Simmons recalled his daughter asking. “I’m frozen and I say, ‘Lady, I am so sorry — I can’t transfer proper now.'”
Aura V and Fyütch settle for the award for greatest youngsters’s music album throughout the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles on Feb. 1.
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Once they lastly obtained to the stage to just accept the Grammy, Simmons spoke concerning the energy of kids’s music.
“Youngsters’s music is greater than a style,” Simmons mentioned. “It’s an intention of artists who’ve devoted our crafts to educating, entertaining and empowering the subsequent era, which is our highest calling to look after our youngsters globally.”
Now, Simmons displays on what has occurred since that history-making second: “Seeing the influence that it is created — our father-daughter relationship, being a Black dad and daughter — has actually put into perspective how vital illustration is in what we do.”
The street to the Grammys
Simmons by no means deliberate to get into youngsters’s music.
His journey began when he was 7, and he carried out as a younger orator in his hometown of Gary, Indiana.
After faculty, as he pursued a full-time music profession, Simmons taught music manufacturing and poetry to younger college students.
Then, when Aura was round 6, she requested to make use of the microphone and play on the keyboard together with her dad.
Aura sings into the microphone in her household’s dwelling studio.
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“She took to it and fortunately had a present for it,” Simmons mentioned.
Their first tune as a duo, “I Am Love, I Am Mild” in 2024, “went loopy,” he mentioned.
Simmons had a brand new objective: making music that captured the life he wished to mannequin for his daughter — with friendship and love — whereas nonetheless “making dope beats,” he mentioned.
For years, Simmons sought success within the music trade. He lastly discovered it together with his daughter.
“I actually do not assume the Grammy would have occurred with out her,” Simmons mentioned.
Simmons and Aura started singing collectively about two years in the past after she requested to make use of a microphone of their dwelling studio.
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Now, he desires her to have her personal solo profession. However Aura is adamant.
“I wish to nonetheless carry out with Daddy,” she instructed her dad, leaning in to hug him.
So now what? Buddies and fractions
Since successful the Grammy, “all the things has modified,” Aura mentioned. She appears like she has two lives: one in all autographs and followers and one in all math video games and buddies at college.
“I want … all of the lives,” Aura mentioned, throwing her arms into the air.
In between the Grammys and an upcoming journey to Nashville, Tenn., Aura eats oatmeal with strawberries and sugar within the morning together with her dad, talks with classmates about what’s for lunch and catapults her physique down the playground slide.
“I wanna study too. I am an peculiar woman, identical to everyone else,” Aura mentioned.
Simmons and Aura’s album, Concord, with their Grammy card on show at their dwelling.
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The fixed consideration — interviews, autograph signings and journeys — might be difficult. Within the lunchroom on Tuesday, different third-graders swarmed Aura for autographs.
“I am unable to do everybody on the identical time — I solely have two fingers,” Aura shouted as she scribbled furiously.
When Aura left lunch, half of her meals was uneaten.
Simmons mentioned he ready Aura for the eye, however he is aware of her attaining success at a younger age.
“The vitality from individuals, none of that’s actual and won’t final,” he mentioned. “She does not know what it is prefer to lose. She does not know what it is prefer to not get these huge issues.”
“What’s actual is how we really feel about what we created … and the way we spend our time and what our character is as individuals,” Simmons continued.
So, Aura’s classroom has grow to be her haven. It is stuffed with 8- and 9-year-olds who largely do not perceive the Grammys.
Aura eats lunch with classmates Sloane Whyte (left) and Mia Kemp.
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“Third grade is the very best,” Aura mentioned — apart from studying division, which Aura mentioned she typically responds to with a clean stare and a “blink, blink” of her eyelashes.
Aura’s trainer, Aleyah King, calls Aura one in all her “Velcro” college students. Throughout a few of King’s lunch hours, Aura likes to sit down together with her. She hasn’t modified since successful the Grammy, King mentioned.
“She has not let any of the ego go to her head,” King mentioned.
When King instructed her class she was feeling underneath the climate at some point final month, Aura introduced her a handwritten word.
“It was just a bit card that she made that mentioned, ‘I really like you and I hope that you simply really feel higher,’ and truthfully turned my day round,” King mentioned.
What the long run holds for Aura V and Fyütch
This weekend, Aura heads together with her dad to Nashville to the Nationwide Museum of African American Music, the place they are going to be honored and their Grammy outfits can be displayed.
They will additionally carry out on the We Are Nashville Pageant with Nashville public and constitution colleges.
Aura mentioned she’s trying ahead to the journey, largely for the meals and a household reunion, which may have much more meals.
“Aura’s perk of touring is meals,” her dad mentioned. “She’s a foodie.”
As for future plans, Simmons can be again on tour this summer season, with Aura becoming a member of him for just a few dates.
Aura goes down a spiral slide throughout recess.
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However for now, again at college, Aura had some totally different, but in addition vital, third-grade enterprise to maintain: a sport of hide-and-seek throughout recess. Shrieks and laughter punctuated the air as the children raced across the playground.
Then, a whistle.
“Awww, come on. Why does recess should be over already?” Aura grumbled alongside together with her classmates.
Seems, recess ends for everyone, even history-making Grammy winners.
NPR’s Mallory Yu contributed reporting to this story.
