Roberta Flack, the genre-spanning singer who made Grammys history, has passed away. 

Flack was musically gifted from a young age. When she was only 15, she entered Howard University on a full music scholarship. Initially, her major was piano, but during her time at the school, she switched to voice, becoming an assistant conductor to the university choir. She began graduate studies at Howard, but the sudden death of her father led her to leave and work as an English teacher.

While teaching, Flack spent her evenings and weekends performing at nightclubs, sometimes on piano and sometimes singing. It was there that jazz legend Les McCann heard her sing and quickly arranged for her to audition for Atlantic Records. While she had some small success with her cover of "Will You Love Me Tomorrow" charting at #76 on the Billboard Hot 100, she didn't get her big break until an unlikely source came through: Clint Eastwood.

Eastwood called Flack himself, asking to use one of her songs for his directorial debut, Play Misty for Me. He had heard one of the songs off her album, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face", and wanted to use it in love scenes in his movie. He paid $2,000 to use the song, and Flack was launched into stardom.

"The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" spent six consecutive weeks at #1 on the charts and finished as the #1 song for 1972. The song won the Grammy for Record of the Year in 1973.

Flack scored her second number-one hit with possibly her most well-known song, "Killing Me Softly with His Song", and made history as the first artist to score Record of the Year Grammy wins in two consecutive years (U2 and Billie Eilish are the only other two who have accomplished the same feat.)

Another year brought another hit, making her the first female artist since 1940 to have a #1 hit in three consecutive years— with "Feel Like Makin' Love".

While she never achieved the same success on the charts, Flack continued to impact the musical world. She sang the theme song for Valerie/The Hogan Family, "Together Through the Years", contributed to the hit children's record Free to Be... You and Me in a duet with Michael Jackson ("When I Grow Up"), voiced Jackson's mother in the "Bad" short film, and even performed for President Nelson Mandela in his home in South Africa.

In 2022, it was announced that Flack had been diagnosed with ALS and retired from performing, due to the illness making it difficult for her to sing.

The music icon was 88 years old.