Over the past year, Skylar Grey has been hip-hop's chart-topping sidekick, lending her whispery vocals on Diddy-Dirty Money's 'Coming Home,' Dr. Dre's 'I Need a Doctor,' Lupe Fiasco's 'Words I Never Said,' and co-writing Eminem's platinum mega-hit, 'Love the Way You Lie.' Grey will bravely go it alone with the release her new single ,'Dance Without You,' via Interscope and producer Alex da Kid's KIDinaKORNER label, formerly Wonderland Music, on June 7.

Grey began her music career at the age of six, performing kids and folk songs on the road with her mother in a group they called Generations.

"That's almost 20 years ago that I started," she told AOL Music this past March, "so it's been a long journey, but even though I've done so much in my 20 years of being in this music industry, it's still very surreal to be up on stage at the Grammys with Dr. Dre and Eminem."

Grey attempted a solo career with the release of a solo album five years ago under her real name, Holly Brook, but then retreated to a cabin in the woods in Oregon where she says she got super depressed and wrote songs before her publisher put her into contact with Alex da Kid, who had penned songs like B.o.B.'s 'Airplanes' and Nicki Minaj's 'Massive Attack.' "I really had no knowledge of [the hip-hop] world until I got the hook on the Eminem record," Grey says of her unusual road to popularity.

Her solo album is slated to drop at the end of the year and already her folksy singer-songwriter vibe seems to have been given a jolt over the past year. In a teaser video for 'Dance Without You,' the Alex da Kid-produced lead single sounds like a more pop-centric dance single.

"Anytime I write, I write based on what I would do," Grey says of her solo work. "I don't really write melodies or lyrics that I'm trying to tailor towards for someone else. Anytime I write it's based on what I would naturally do and then other people can sing it too, put their own twist on it."



Watch Sylar Grey's 'Dance Without You' Teaser



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