In 1994, after signing a development deal with Warner Bros. Records, she was asked by veteran producer Quincy Jones to appear on his album Q's Jook Joint (1995), earning her Grammy Award nominations for their collaboration on "You Put a Move on My Heart" and "Slow Jams".

Several songs from these albums became hit singles on the pop and R&B record charts, including "So Into You", "Stranger in My House", and "Imagination", as well as her collaborations "Into You", "Missing You", and "Spend My Life with You".

[3] Along with attending high school at Walkerville, she made several appearances in local theater and choral concerts before winning Canada's prestigious YTV Achievement Award for vocal performance in 1993.

[1] Her performance reportedly impressed all in attendance, including veteran producer Quincy Jones, who took notice and later offered her the chance to appear on his album Q's Jook Joint (1995).

[4] Selected as the first single from Q's Jook Joint, it became a moderate commercial success, reaching the top twenty of the US Billboard Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs, but earned acclaim from critics, resulting in a Grammy Award nomination for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance at the 39th ceremony.

[5] Tamia along with Babyface, Portrait, and Barry White received a second nomination that night for "Slow Jams", the second single from Jones' album, which fared similarly on the charts, peaking at number two on the New Zealand Singles Chart,[5] and received a third nod in the Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals category for her performance on "Missing You", a collaboration with singers Brandy, Gladys Knight, and Chaka Khan for the soundtrack of the 1996 film Set It Off.

Playing the cruise liner's musical entertainer, she performed the Diane Warren-penned single "Make Tonight Beautiful", which was released as part of the film's soundtrack.

[4] The same year, she has also appeared in television sitcoms such as Rock Me Baby and Kenan & Kel and recorded the all-star charity single "Love Shouldn't Hurt" for the National Committee for the Prevention of Child Abuse along with All-4-One, Michael Bolton, and others.

[citation needed] Frustrated by Qwest's label politics, Tamia transitioned to Elektra Records the same year and began work on her second album A Nu Day.

[9] Rapper Missy Elliott, frequent co-producer Bink, Dallas Austin, and Shep Crawford worked with Tamia on the majority project, which she declared "not as ballad-driven as" her debut album and felt it was "more aggressive in terms of the formats of the songs".

[12] In 2003, Tamia appeared on the international top ten hit "Into You", a collaboration with rapper Fabolous from his second studio album Street Dreams (2003) based on her 1998 single "So Into You".

Initially titled Still, the project was indefinitely bumped from its original August 2003 schedule after Tamia's multiple sclerosis diagnosis and subsequent treatment.

[17][18] A rather intimate process, the pair met on a daily basis in a recording studio in Orlando, Florida, to write and produce new songs,[19] with Rodney "Darkchild" Jerkins providing additional material late into the production of the album.

[30] Her sixth album, Love Life, was completed in ten days and released on June 9, 2015, in the United States in collaboration with her own label, Plus One Music Group.

[32] Love Life earned generally favorable reviews from critics, who summed it as "grown-up, worn-in R&B at its finest",[33] and debuted at number 24 on the US Billboard 200, selling 16,000 copies in the week ending June 14, 2015.

[42] In 2003, amid the recording of her third album More, doctors at Duke University Hospital in Durham, North Carolina, diagnosed Tamia with multiple sclerosis, a demyelinating disease in which the insulating covers of nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord are damaged,[44] after she had been experiencing mystifying bouts of fatigue and numbness in her hands, feet, and legs.

[45] While the music project was indefinitely bumped from its original August 2003 schedule, she went into subsequent treatment, using corticosteroids to help delay the onset of more severe symptoms.