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Nadia Beckford

Nadia Beckford, known professionally as Nadia, was a Jamaican-Dominican vocalist, songwriter, producer, and model from Paterson, New Jersey. Reggae was her first musical love and remained the bedrock of a career that also moved through soul, jazz, R&B, and Caribbean fusion. She was already an established solo performer when she joined CRATB around 2030–2031, continued releasing her own work during the band’s active years, and expanded that solo career after CRATB’s peak.

Nadia was direct, self-possessed, funny, and difficult to impress. She maintained firm professional and personal boundaries while giving the people she trusted a much warmer, more playful version of herself. Her son, Raffie, was born in 2035 during her on-and-off relationship with Ezra Cruz. After their romance ended in 2038, Nadia and Ezra built a durable co-parenting partnership. She later married Andrés Báez.

Early Life and Family

Nadia was born around 2006 in Paterson, New Jersey, the middle of three children. Her mother, Nadine Beckford, was Jamaican and sang in church choirs and a local band. Her father, Joaquín “Joaco” Peralta, was Dominican, warm, steady, and present. Nadine’s reggae shared the family home with the merengue, bachata, Spanish, and Dominican traditions Joaco carried. Nadia Beckford was her birth and legal name; she eventually performed under the mononym ‘’Nadia’‘.

Her older brother, Damián, called Dame by the family, was the first of the children to pursue singing after their mother. He heard Nadia singing under her breath, affirmed her talent before she had performed publicly, and pushed her toward her first open mic. Jaz, the youngest sibling, remained close to Nadia into adulthood.

Damián’s Death

In 2023, when Nadia was approximately seventeen and Damián approximately twenty-one, Damián was walking home in Paterson with his boyfriend. They were singing along to music playing through his headphones when they were attacked, and Damián was shot and killed. Investigators never determined whether the violence was random or targeted because Damián was openly gay and with another man. The case remained unresolved.

Damián’s death became the central grief of Nadia’s young life. She kept a recording of him singing, wrote and performed material connected to him, and created the ‘’Fi Dame’’ playlist in his memory. The loss contributed to her guardedness and protectiveness without defining the whole of her personality or work. Years later, when Ezra first heard her audition, he recognized it in her voice: “That girl has grief in her throat, same as me.”

Musical Formation

Nadia learned music through family, community, listening, and performance. Reggae came to her through Nadine and the wider Jamaican side of the family; merengue, bachata, and Spanish-language music came through Joaco. Growing up in Paterson while remaining familiar with New York City’s music scene gave her access to Jersey and New York performance communities without making her any less Jersey-raised.

After Damián’s death, Nadia built a local reputation through Paterson and New York-area open mics, dancehall nights, reggae showcases, and other live work. Some of her early standout material addressed Damián openly. She was not introduced to professional music through CRATB; Charlie encountered an artist who had already developed her own sound, discipline, audience, and stage authority.

Main article: Nadia Beckford (Career and Legacy)

Physical Characteristics and Presentation

Build, Skin, and Face

Nadia had a curvy build and carried herself with a planted, confident posture that made her presence apparent before she spoke. At rest, her stillness felt deliberate rather than passive; when she moved, especially while performing, the motion was economical and rhythmically precise.

Her skin was a very deep, rich dark brown—“super dark”—with warm undertones. Raffie inherited that deep umber coloring from her. Nadia did not mute or visually soften her complexion for public presentation; her modeling and beauty work centered it.

Her eyes were sharp, penetrating, and assessing. The effect came from the steadiness and precision of her attention.

Hair, Hands, and Sensory Presence

Nadia wore her hair in locs, often pulled back and sometimes wrapped in colorful fabric. Rust-colored wraps and other vivid patterns became part of her recognizable presentation. She maintained her locs with shea- and coconut-based hair oils, whose warm scent sat beneath a single signature fragrance she wore consistently.

Her hands were strong, warm, and capable, usually softened with shea butter and marked by a few small kitchen scars. They were the same hands with which she cooked, cared for and braided Raffie’s hair, worked production controls, and held a microphone. She ran physically warm enough for someone seated close to feel the heat from her body.

Nadia often wore bangles whose small percussion accompanied her movement. She also hummed under her breath so regularly that the sound could precede conscious speech, as though the instrument were idling. Her speaking voice carried the same low, chest-deep weight as her singing voice.

Clothing and Style

Her clothing combined bohemian elements, natural fabrics, and Jamaican-Dominican touches without turning either heritage into costume. She favored pieces that moved well through rehearsal and performance and headwraps that worked both practically and aesthetically with her locs. Her public style was assured and culturally grounded, while her beauty partnerships deliberately centered dark skin, locs, protective styles, and products made with Black consumers in mind.

Personality and Communication

Nadia was fiercely independent, self-possessed, and direct. She knew what she would and would not accept and generally stated a boundary once rather than softening it into a suggestion. She was unimpressed by fame, celebrity performance, and industry charm; Ezra’s reputation did not exempt him from her scrutiny.

That severity was only one register. Nadia’s humor was dry, warm, and frequently delivered through an affectionate eye-roll. She had little patience for posturing, including artists who performed hardness more convincingly than they lived it, but her sharpness could come from care as readily as annoyance. Strangers often met an assessing, reserved woman. Friends and family knew her as affectionate, unguarded, and funny, the person who sent voice notes containing her full laugh.

Once Nadia chose a person, a project, or a principle, she committed fully. Her protectiveness was most visible around Raffie, but it also shaped her loyalty to Damián’s memory, her professional standards, and her place in the wider band family. She guarded her privacy without becoming emotionally blank. Keeping her private life out of public consumption allowed her to decide who received the more vulnerable parts of her.

Nadia spoke English and Jamaican Patois. Her Patois surfaced most naturally with family and trusted people and when emotion ran hot. She did not treat professional Standard English as more authentic or intelligent; the shift marked audience, comfort, and context. In musical work, she was technically precise and willing to challenge an arrangement rather than accept a decorative vocalist’s role.

Ezra called her ‘’Nadi’’ in affectionate, imploring, or flirtatious moments and ‘’Nads’’ in later domestic exchanges. Her best-known lines preserve the compression and force of her ordinary speech:

  • “Don’t need it,” when offered sheet music during her CRATB audition.
  • “I’m not here to sleep with any of you. Just want the gig.”
  • “You don’t get to die like him. Not you. Not now,” after Ezra’s Berlin overdose.
  • “Either get clean, or you’ll never know him,” establishing the condition under which Ezra could be part of their unborn son’s life.

Tastes, Rituals, and Daily Life

Nadia’s private listening was broader than any one performance category. Her roots-reggae foundation included Bob Marley, Buju Banton, Beres Hammond, Sizzla, Etana, Chronixx, and Protoje. She returned to Sade, Lauryn Hill, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, and Jorja Smith for neo-soul and grief-literate women’s voices. Koffee, Burna Boy, dancehall, and Afrobeats supplied movement and release. Juan Luis Guerra, merengue, bachata, and older bachateros carried Joaco’s side of home.

She cooked from both sides of her family. Jamaican staples included ackee and saltfish, rice and peas, curry goat, and hard dough bread; Dominican dishes included mangú, sancocho, and tostones. Food, like music and language, was something she transmitted to Raffie through ordinary repetition rather than formal lessons.

Her mornings began with vocal warm-ups and scales. She preferred tea to coffee, especially Jamaican sorrel or ginger preparations. One of her favorite ways to unwind was a late-night kitchen after Raffie had fallen asleep, something simmering while reggae or bachata played low. The arrangement recreated the sound and smell of her childhood home on a smaller scale.

Nadia kept relatively few sentimental objects. Damián’s recorded voice was the exception. She protected that recording, returned to it, and treated sound as the most direct way she still had to keep him present.

Her daily schedule changed with touring, studio work, custody, and Raffie’s age. When Raffie was with her, school, food, sleep, and ordinary parenting shaped the day around her artistic work. When he was with Ezra, she could concentrate longer blocks of time on rehearsals, production, recording, and performances. She coordinated those practical demands with Ezra and later Nina while maintaining the same privacy rules for Raffie across households.

Music, Modeling, and Public Work

Main article: Nadia Beckford (Career and Legacy)

Nadia’s voice was widely described as “smoke and velvet” delivered with “controlled fury.” She could move through complex rhythmic figures “like water down a wall,” bringing reggae lineage and Caribbean rhythmic precision into CRATB’s jazz-fusion vocabulary. Her own summary of the task was simpler: “You’re going to feel me.”

She wrote and produced as well as sang. Her solo career existed before CRATB, continued alongside the group, and expanded after the band’s peak years. Releases moved between Fifth Bar Collective and independent distribution depending on the project. She received major-award recognition, including Grammy nominations and wins.

Nadia also modeled and worked with hair-care, beauty, and headwrap brands that served Black consumers. Her named partners included Loclicious, The Loc God, Taliah Waajid, and The Wrap Life. At approximately seventeen, she publicly criticized Procter & Gamble’s 2023 acquisition of Mielle Organics, a brand whose products she had used. Mielle was not one of her later partnerships.

As her career matured, Nadia mentored younger Caribbean artists. She did not abandon her own work to become only a mentor; the role grew alongside her continuing recordings and performances.

Health and Medical History

Nadia’s health was generally robust. Her significant medical history centered on Raffie’s birth, surgical recovery, and postpartum depression; she had no other chronic disability or ongoing health condition.

Raffie’s Birth and Surgical Recovery

Raffie’s June 2035 birth followed a failed induction and emergency cesarean section. Nadia had endured labor before undergoing major abdominal surgery, and the early postpartum period combined surgical pain, restricted movement, newborn care, sleep loss, and Ezra’s very early addiction recovery.

At five weeks postpartum, Nadia remained in pain and could not sleep even when Raffie slept. Stairs and getting in or out of bed still hurt, laughing or sneezing pulled painfully at the healing incision, and she remained under lifting restrictions beyond carrying the baby.

Nadia breastfed Raffie and produced milk easily enough that oversupply, forceful let-down, and engorgement became problems of their own.

Postpartum Depression

Nadia developed postpartum depression. She initially read its sleeplessness, irritability, shaking, resentment, difficulty soothing Raffie, and perceived bodily failure as ordinary exhaustion, surgical recovery, anger, and personal inadequacy rather than as an illness. The condition strained her functioning and relationships before she received help.

Relationship to Her Body

Nadia feared being seen as merely beautiful or “exotic” rather than talented, her body treated as decoration before anyone heard her musical expertise. As a dark-skinned Black woman working in an industry that sexualized and dismissed women of color, Nadia worked to make her artistry the first thing people recognized. Her modeling and enjoyment of her own presentation did not diminish that demand.

At five weeks postpartum, she became increasingly irritable and interpreted exhaustion, resentment, difficulty soothing Raffie, the slow recovery of her body, and the need for help as evidence that she was failing. Her independence made dependence during recovery especially difficult to tolerate.

She resisted switching from breastfeeding to bottles because nursing felt like the one part of pregnancy and birth that her body had accomplished as expected. That attachment existed inside the emerging postpartum depression rather than proving that nursing itself was uncomplicated or sufficient protection against it.

Later body-image difficulty also complicated her readiness to return to performance. Recovery did not erase the physical and relational difficulty of those months.

Family and Core Relationships

Raffie Cruz

Main article: Nadia Beckford and Raffie Cruz

Rafael Héctor “Raffie” Cruz was born on June 9, 2035. He used Cruz as his birth surname and later adopted Cruz-Navarro as a shared family name after marrying Elías Navarro. He inherited Nadia’s deep umber skin tone and Ezra’s facial features and called Nadia ‘’Mami’‘.

Nadia protected Raffie’s privacy from infancy. After an unauthorized daycare photograph circulated when he was eight months old, she supported consistent restrictions on images, identifying routines, and access across both parents’ homes. When Raffie later created ‘’R.C. Sessions’’ with his face blacked out, that choice drew on a privacy boundary his parents had already preserved for him.

She raised Raffie inside both sides of his Caribbean inheritance. Her home carried Jamaican and Dominican food, music, language, and family history; she also supported Ezra’s transmission of Raffie’s Puerto Rican heritage and Spanish. She told Raffie about the maternal uncle he never met and preserved Damián as a person rather than only as the tragedy that preceded him.

Nadia later welcomed Raffie’s husband, Elías, into the family and became grandmother to Christian Mateo and Sebastian Gabriel Cruz-Navarro. Her long-standing separation between love and public exposure continued into the next generation: the family could celebrate Raffie, Elías, and their children without making private people into content.

Ezra Cruz

Main article: Ezra Cruz and Nadia Beckford

Nadia met Ezra through her CRATB audition around 2030–2031, after Nina had left him following the 2029 shooting. Their attraction grew from musical and emotional recognition and became an intense, on-and-off romance. Neither person yielded easily; their chemistry and their arguments drew from the same force.

Her internal response to Ezra at their first meeting was:

“He walks in thinking his reputation precedes him. The smile, the cologne, the way he holds his trumpet like it’s an extension of his soul. But I see the grief too. Same as mine. Different verses, same song. He wants me to feel him? Good. I want him to feel me right back.”

Nadia told Ezra she was pregnant in late 2034. His substance use escalated as his fear of repeating his father intensified. In January 2035, while Nadia was five months pregnant, Ezra took a pill contaminated with fentanyl in Berlin and nearly died. At the hospital, Nadia told him, “You don’t get to die like him. Not you. Not now.” She later made the boundary explicit: “Either get clean, or you’ll never know him.” Ezra entered treatment and continued recovery through Raffie’s birth.

After the birth, Nadia and Ezra made a sustained attempt to build a stable romantic household. Their final romantic split occurred in 2038 before Raffie’s June 9 third birthday, while he was still two. Their recurring conflict, intense public scrutiny, and Ezra’s unresolved attachment to Nina all contributed; no single event explains the end. Nadia chose co-parenting over continuing a romance that could not provide the stability they wanted for their son.

Their co-parenting remained direct and sometimes contentious but centered Raffie’s needs. Ezra continued to mark Nadia’s birthday, Mother’s Day, and Christmas and called her ‘’Nads’‘. Nadia defended his consistent presence as Raffie’s father while maintaining boundaries around recovery and privacy.

In November 2038, Nadia was in Philadelphia for a cousin’s wedding when she learned that Ezra had collapsed with severe bilateral pneumonia and was critically ill. She returned to New York before attending the ceremony and joined Nina in the hospital vigil. Seeing him intubated, she said, “No. No, baby. Not you.” Her immediate return reflected an enduring family and co-parenting bond without undoing the end of their romance.

In spring 2043, Nadia and young Raffie joined Ezra and a pregnant Nina on a family trip to Hawaii. A photograph of the four circulated publicly and drew praise as well as hostile commentary from people who treated cooperation between an ex-partner and a current partner as inherently suspect. Nadia and Nina continued building a family structure in which Raffie could call Nadia ‘’Mami’’ and Nina ‘’Mama’’ without either bond erasing the other.

Andrés Báez

Main article: Nadia Beckford and Andrés Báez

Nadia met Andrés Báez by chance later in life, outside the music industry. Andrés was a Dominican-American architect and contractor who did not initially know her public career. He was steady, secure, and uninterested in competing with either her success or her history.

Nadia and Andrés married later in her life. He entered Raffie’s life patiently and did not attempt to replace Ezra. Raffie was wary at first, then developed a relationship with Andrés through repeated presence and practical time together. Andrés taught him building skills and became another stable adult in the family’s wide network.

Nadine, Joaco, Jaz, and Damián

Nadine and Joaco remained part of Nadia’s and Raffie’s lives, carrying the music, language, food, and family history of both sides of Nadia’s upbringing. Jaz and Nadia remained close after Damián’s death. The surviving family continued to name Damián, play his recording, and tell Raffie who he had been.

Damián’s death changed each of them differently. Nadine carried him through her singing, while Joaco grew quieter. Nadia and Jaz learned young that loving people was dangerous and worth it anyway; the loss strengthened their closeness without making either sister stop loving.

Legacy

Nadia’s professional legacy joined artistic control with cultural specificity. She demonstrated a career structure in which a Caribbean artist could produce her own work, move between ensemble and solo careers, earn major recognition, and refuse traditional pop as the price of scale. Her named brand work likewise treated locs, dark skin, and Black consumers as central rather than supplementary.

Her family legacy was equally concrete. She demanded that Ezra survive and enter recovery without pretending she alone caused or maintained his sobriety. She ended a romantic relationship that no longer worked while preserving Raffie’s access to two committed parents. She later built a marriage with Andrés without asking Raffie to replace one father with another. Across those choices, Nadia remained an artist, mother, sister, partner, and person in her own right rather than being defined by her relationship with Ezra.

Memorable Quotes

“I’m not here to sleep with any of you. Just want the gig.”

—During her CRATB audition

“Don’t need it.”

—When offered sheet music at the audition

“You’re going to feel me.”

—Personal performance motto

“You don’t get to die like him. Not you. Not now.”

—To Ezra after the Berlin overdose

“Either get clean, or you’ll never know him.”

—To Ezra while pregnant with Raffie

“No. No, baby. Not you.”

—At Ezra’s November 2038 intensive-care bedside

Characters Supporting Characters Living Characters Black Characters Mixed Heritage Characters Latinx Characters Dominican Characters Jamaican Characters Musicians Vocalists Producers CRATB Members Beckford Family