What Happened to Meelah Williams? Still Touring With 702 in 2026

If you owned a radio in 1999, you knew that voice. Somebody asked where the girls were at, and three young women from Las Vegas answered so hard the question became a permanent part of pop culture. The one carrying the lead was Kameelah “Meelah” Williams. Then the group quietly stopped, and a lot of us lost the thread. So where is she now? The answer involves a stage, a grief she has never hidden, a children’s book and a son named Zac.

01Profile

A quick note on that group name, because people still ask: 702 is the Las Vegas area code. It is one of the most literal group names in R&B history, and honestly, one of the best.

02The Rise: From Vegas Teens to Platinum

A high school group with a record deal

702 started in 1993 under a different name, formed by sisters LeMisha and Irish Grinstead and a third singer, with all of them coming up through the Las Vegas Academy of the Performing Arts. Meelah came into the fold in 1995 after a lineup change, and the chemistry locked immediately. She had the grit and the range; the sisters had the blend. That was the formula.

Their first real national moment was not even their own record. In 1995 they were featured on Subway’s “This Lil’ Game We Play,” which climbed to number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100. For a group of teenagers who had barely finished school, that was an absurd starting point.

”No Doubt” and the Motown years

The debut album, No Doubt, arrived in October 1996 on Motown and went gold. “Steelo” and “Get It Together” put them in steady rotation, and the group’s identity — tight three-part harmony over hard mid-90s production — was set. Meelah has said in interviews since that the timing was almost comically fast: the album came out only months after she and LeMisha graduated high school.

”Where My Girls At?” and the peak

Then came the self-titled album in 1999, and with it the song that outlived everything else. “Where My Girls At?”, written and produced by Missy Elliott, hit the top five on the Hot 100 and has since been ranked 46th on Billboard’s list of the 100 greatest girl group songs of all time. It is the kind of hit that keeps a group bookable for the next thirty years, which is exactly what happened.

The album was their best seller, and by the mid-2000s the group had reportedly moved more than four million records worldwide. For a trio that never chased scandal or reinvention, that is a serious run.

03Stepping Away From the Spotlight

The unravelling was not dramatic, and that is part of why fans never got a clean answer. Meelah stepped away from 702 in 2001 to work on her own material and sang background for artists including Faith Evans and Macy Gray. She was briefly replaced, then returned, and the group put out a third album before winding down. By 2006, 702 had effectively disbanded.

In later interviews Meelah has described it in plain, unglamorous terms — exhaustion, business disagreements, three young women who had been working nonstop since they were teenagers and needed to breathe. There was no public blowup. The group simply stopped, and the industry moved on to the next thing.

She stayed visible in fits and starts. She released solo singles independently, took acting and hosting work, and in 2014 joined the cast of R&B Divas: Atlanta, where a lot of viewers met her as a mother rather than as a pop star. That show is also where she spoke publicly about her relationship with Musiq Soulchild — the two never married, and she described their co-parenting arrangement at the time as complicated, her word, said on camera with a shrug.

1995Meelah joins the Las Vegas trio that becomes 702; the group is featured on Subway's "This Lil' Game We Play."
1996Debut album No Doubt is released on Motown and goes gold.
1999"Where My Girls At?" reaches the top five on the Billboard Hot 100.
2001Meelah leaves the group to pursue solo and session work; she later returns.
2006702 disbands.
2009Her son Zac is born.
2014She joins the cast of R&B Divas: Atlanta.
2017702 reunites at the Soul Train Music Awards in November and begins touring again.
2023Irish Grinstead dies on September 16 at age 43 after an undisclosed illness.
2024702 appears as a special guest on the Queens of R&B Tour alongside SWV, Xscape, Mýa and Total.
2025Meelah releases the solo single "All Eyes on Me" in October.

04Life as an Autism Advocate and Author

Here is the part of the story that has nothing to do with charts, and it may be the part Meelah is proudest of.

Her son Zac, born in 2009, is autistic. Rather than keep that private, she turned it into her second career. She founded P.R.O.U.D. — Parents Reaching Out to Understand Developmental Delays — an organization focused on autism and special-needs awareness, and she has spent years doing speaking engagements aimed squarely at parents who have just received a diagnosis and have no idea what happens next.

In 2023 she published her first children’s book, Zac’s Favorite Socks, illustrated by Karleen Goldsmith Seirey. The story is small and specific in the way good children’s books are: Zac is excited for the first day of first grade, and then his favorite socks go missing, and the whole day tilts. Anyone parenting a child with sensory sensitivities will recognize the scenario instantly. She promoted it the way an independent author has to — book signings, including a homecoming event in Las Vegas, podcast appearances, and a steady stream of posts to her own audience.

It is a genuinely unusual second act. Most 90s R&B singers who stay in public life do it through nostalgia touring alone. Meelah does the nostalgia touring and then goes and talks to a room full of parents about IEPs and sensory meltdowns.

05What Meelah Williams Is Doing Now

Still on stage, with an empty space beside her

The loss that reshaped everything came on September 16, 2023, when Irish Grinstead died at 43 after what the group described as a serious, undisclosed illness. Irish had stepped back on medical leave the previous December. Meelah’s public tribute was raw and personal, framed around a friendship that started when they were kids. Missy Elliott, who wrote their biggest hit, paid tribute publicly as well.

Meelah and LeMisha chose to keep going. They performed together on the 2024 Queens of R&B Tour, the 30-city run co-headlined by SWV and Xscape, and they have continued as a duo since — carrying the catalogue, and by their own account carrying Irish with them.

In November 2025, the two sat for an interview marking thirty years since No Doubt, and Meelah’s framing of that milestone was less about triumph than about how young they were.

We were kids. We were fresh out of high school. — Meelah Williams, YouKnowIGotSoul interview, November 2025

New solo music, on her own terms

In October 2025 she released “All Eyes on Me,” an Afrobeats-leaning solo single reportedly produced by Kreative Villains and written by Cyrus DeShield. It is a genuine departure from the 702 sound, and she has been refreshingly unprecious about it — describing solo music at this stage as something closer to a hobby than a campaign, with more unreleased material sitting in the vault. Fans have been promised a full solo album for years; she has stopped promising a date and started simply putting songs out when they are ready.

2026: a full calendar

The bookings have not slowed. 702 played an all-star Valentine’s Day show at the Shreveport Municipal Auditorium in Louisiana on February 14, 2026, on a bill with Kelly Price, Sunshine Anderson, J. Holiday, Sammie, Ray J and Bobby Valentino. In June the group was billed on the “No Skips Friday” night of the 56th Hampton Jazz & Music Festival at the Hampton Coliseum in Virginia, alongside Jagged Edge, Dru Hill, Next and Lil’ Mo — a lineup that reads like a perfectly preserved 1999 radio playlist.

Between dates she remains active on Instagram as @itsmeelah, where her bio does the whole summary for her: boy mom, 702 lead singer, kids’ book author, indie artist. She has also said she would love to build a proper hometown run in Las Vegas one day, which would close a very satisfying loop for a group named after the city’s area code.

06Summary

So, what happened to Meelah Williams? Nothing dramatic, and that is sort of the point. She had a five-year run at the absolute center of R&B, stepped back when the machine got too heavy, raised a son, built a second calling out of the hardest part of her private life, and then went back to work. In 2026 she is a working singer with a legacy catalogue, a small independent solo career, a published book and a nonprofit — which is a far more durable arrangement than most 90s hitmakers ever manage.

Meelah Williams in 2026: Quick Facts

Still performing as the lead singer of 702, now a duo with LeMisha Grinstead following Irish Grinstead's death in September 2023.
Played a Valentine's Day R&B showcase in Shreveport, Louisiana in February 2026 and was billed at the Hampton Jazz & Music Festival in June 2026.
Released the solo single "All Eyes on Me" in October 2025, an Afrobeats-influenced departure from the 702 sound.
Author of the children's book Zac's Favorite Socks, inspired by her autistic son.
Founder of P.R.O.U.D. (Parents Reaching Out to Understand Developmental Delays), an autism and special-needs awareness organization.
Marked thirty years since 702's debut album No Doubt in 2026.
Active on Instagram as @itsmeelah, where she posts about music, motherhood and advocacy.

The next time “Where My Girls At?” comes on somewhere — a wedding, a grocery store, a playlist you did not build — it is worth remembering that the woman singing lead is still out there doing the work. She is just doing it in two places at once now: on a festival stage in front of ten thousand people, and in a conference room in front of thirty parents who needed someone to tell them it gets easier. Both count.