[3] Born in Abington, Pennsylvania, Ward grew up in Roseburg, Oregon,[4] where she joined her first band, with her father, at the age of 12.

[5] Ward recalled the first song she sang was "an Albert King track called 'As the Years Go Passing By'".

[6] Ward's maternal grandmother, Zsuzsanna Friedman, was a Jewish Hungarian who converted to Catholicism to avoid persecution during the Holocaust.

[7] After moving to Los Angeles and signing to E. Kidd Bogart's Boardwalk Entertainment Group, Ward began recording the Criminal EP, as well as Eleven Roses, a free mixtape on which she offered her interpretations of tracks by Kendrick Lamar, Childish Gambino, Tyler, the Creator,[8] Freddie Gibbs and Wiz Khalifa.

[10] For the recording of "Criminal", she sampled the beat from "Oil Money" by Freddie Gibbs, who was so impressed by Ward's remake that he asked to contribute a guest verse to the official version on the EP.

[12] Ward performed the album's first single, "Put the Gun Down", on VH1's Big Morning Buzz Live with Carrie Keagan on September 19, 2012,[13] The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on November 1, 2012,[14] and Conan on January 10, 2013.

[15] In March 2013, the New York Times said of Ward, "Her energy evokes Tina Turner's, her chops Aretha Franklin's and her soul Etta James's",[16] and she was named one of Fuse TV's 30 must-see artists at SXSW.

[17] Ward performed her second single, "365 Days", on Good Morning America[18] and Big Morning Buzz Live,[19] both on March 7, 2013; on the September 3, 2013, episode of The Tonight Show with Jay Leno;[20] and on the January 30, 2014, episode of The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson.

[29][30] She performed at the inaugural Arroyo Seco Weekend festival in June 2017 at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.

[55] She began doing this at 12 years old when she performed with her father's blues band and wanted to feel "more confident like Muddy Waters and Big Mama Thornton."