Solána Imani Rowe was born in 1989 in St. Louis, Missouri, and raised in Maplewood, New Jersey. Her father was an executive producer at CNN and her mother was an executive at AT&T. Her mother is Christian and her father is Muslim. She was raised as a Muslim and continues to follow Islam. "It's like the belief in one God, all the pillars of Islam et cetera, and I think those are ideas that will never leave me, those make sense in my spirit. It's the way that I connect with God; it has always made sense to me. I don't wanna be disrespectful because I have too much love and respect for the religion, for my father, and for myself. She attended Muslim classes every day after her regular school. After the September 11 attacks, Rowe was subjected to bullying in 7th grade, leading her to stop wearing her hijab. After high school Rowe later went to three separate colleges, finally settling at Delaware State University to study marine biology. She eventually dropped out in her last semester and immediately started taking on random jobs to make money. Rowe formed her stage name from the Supreme Alphabet, taking influence from rapper RZA of the Wu-Tang Clan. The last two letters in her name stand for Zig-Zag and Allah, while the first letter S can mean either savior or sovereign.