There are artists who return to the stage after years away and seem to be chasing something they once had. Mýa is not one of them. Her set at the 2026 Jazz in the Gardens Festival moved with the ease of someone who never really left, working through a catalog that still holds weight and connecting with an audience that clearly felt every moment of it.
She handed out roses and CDs before the show even started, moving through beloved hits and weaving in medleys that honored the golden era of 1990s R&B. The performance was less a nostalgia trip than a reminder that some music was simply built to last.
Among the highlights was a live performance of her latest single ASAP, featuring Atlanta rapper 21 Savage on the official remix. The pairing raised eyebrows when it was first announced, but Mýa made clear backstage that the collaboration was anything but accidental.
Mýa on how the ASAP remix came together
The process began with a simple question. Before anything else, Mýa wanted to know whether 21 Savage would actually connect with the record, which she described as leaning into an older, more classic sound. She reached out through his management and the response came back positive. He loved it.
What followed was something she said almost never happens given how demanding both of their schedules are. She flew to Atlanta, set up a proper studio session, and the two worked together in the same room. Watching him engage with the material, absorbing her lyrics before stepping fully into his own contribution, was something she described as a genuinely rare and memorable creative experience.
The record itself draws from a specific and personal place. Mýa traced its origins back to memories of time spent at the skating rink, the kind with four wheels and live band energy, rooted in the late 1980s. That combination of old-school warmth and present-day hip-hop texture is exactly what she was after, and having 21 Savage bring his own era into the mix gave the final product a generational depth she found deeply satisfying.
Mýa brings home with her wherever she goes
To close out her Jazz in the Gardens set, Mýa transformed a classic record originally connected to The Rugrats Movie soundtrack into a go-go arrangement, a percussion-forward style of funk music that was born in her hometown of Washington, D.C. The gesture was pointed and personal. Go-go is not just a genre for Mýa. It is part of where she comes from, a tradition kept alive in part by the late D.C. legend Chuck Brown.
She spoke warmly about the city and the community she has never drifted far from, describing close ties to family and childhood friends that have remained intact regardless of where her career has taken her. Fame, she suggested, has simply never been the point. Music is.
Mýa on independence and what keeps her going
Mýa has built the later chapter of her career as an independent artist, and she appears to have found genuine peace in that position. She described music as both a personal joy and a form of therapy, something she creates first for herself and then releases into the world in the hope that it finds someone who needs it.
There is nothing wistful about the way she talks about where she is now. The set at Jazz in the Gardens, the remix with 21 Savage, the go-go tribute to D.C. at the end of the night. All of it pointed toward an artist operating entirely on her own terms, with no finish line in sight.
