Featuring Via Rosa's sultry vocals and Na'el Shehade's genre-blurring production, the moody, kinetic music of Chicago's Drama borrows from the history of R&B, dance music, jazz, and pop. The duo established a brooding sound on short-form releases like 2018's Lies After Love EP, then let some light into 2020's full-length Dance Without Me. On singles like 2022's "3AM," Drama emphasized the danceable foundations of their elegantly sexy style.

Singer/songwriter/producer Rosa was born in Austin, Texas, to a musical family: Her parents performed in a reggae band and her dad was also a producer. She began making her own music and trained to be a chef during her teens, at which point she and her family had moved to California. By 2010 she was living in Chicago and recording with the hip-hop collective THEMpeople, who introduced her to singer Jean Deaux. In turn, Deaux connected Rosa with Shehade, a Chicago native who inherited his entrepreneurial spirit from his Palestinian immigrant father. Shehade fell in love with rap music at age 13, and his passion for DJ culture and production led him to collaborate with Kanye West on G.O.O.D. Music: Cruel Summer and with Chance the Rapper on his Acid Rap mixtape. However, when Shehade and Rosa met in 2013, he was ready to work on his own music, and Drama was born.

The duo's house-influenced debut single, "Hope's Up," arrived in September 2015 and appeared on the Gallows EP, which was released late in 2016. Drama returned in May 2018 with Lies After Love, an EP with a more streamlined sound. The following year, Rosa and Shehade signed to Ghostly International, which issued Drama's debut album, Dance Without Me, in February 2020. That April, the pair teamed with Gorgon City for the single "Nobody," and that September, the Dance Without Me (Remixes) EP gathered reworkings of some of the album's tracks by Moglii, Pional, Poolside, and Rezident.

Early in 2021, Drama reunited with Poolside for "I Feel High," kicking off a prolific year that included collaborations with Flight Facilities ("Move") and Gorgon City ("You've Done Enough"), a Brijean remix ("Hey Boy"), and several singles of their own ("Dark Rain," "Don't Hold Back," and "Give No Fucks"). In February 2022, the duo returned with the slinky track "3AM." ~ Heather Phares, Rovi