Uzoechi Osisioma "Uzo" Emenike (born 9 November 1994), professionally known by his stage name MNEK (, ), is a British singer, songwriter and record producer. He has been nominated for a Grammy and a Brit Award, and has received the ASCAP Vanguard Award. His writing and production credits include H.E.R., Jax Jones, Zara Larsson, Little Mix, Dua Lipa, FLO, Sugababes, Clean Bandit, Julia Michaels, Craig David, Christina Aguilera, Becky Hill, Selena Gomez, Years & Years, Kylie Minogue, Beyoncé, Madonna, KSI, Mabel and Twice. Career 2011–2013: Breakthrough His stage name is a gramogram of his surname, Emenike. In an interview with Build LDN, MNEK talked about his introduction into the music industry and how, at first, he did not even know what a publisher was. He stated, "I started writing poems and writing songs around the age of 8 or 7 and I started playing around with production software from really young as well. I then put some stuff up on Myspace finally when I was 14. There were two songs I had. I sent them out to all my favourite artists on Myspace and it just landed on this artist at the time called CocknBullKid, but she's now Anita Blay and she's an amazing songwriter. She was like "Okay, cool. I'm just gonna send this to my publisher" and at the time I had no idea what a publisher was. So she sent it and that was that and it became this flurry of people wanting to be my publisher and then that was me in the industry, but then I've had to grow in the industry at the same time – I've been learning on the job – because I was still in school and all that stuff. I was managing how to work that around it because my parents weren't gonna let me leave school." In 2011, when he was 16, he began writing and working with production group Xenomania and contributed to Florrie's 2011 extended play Experiments, which first labelled him professionally as a songwriter. Shortly after, his work with Xenomania earned him his break out when he worked with top acts The Saturdays and The Wanted. He also released his debut single "If Truth Be Told" in November of that year. In 2012, he worked with singer and songwriter A*M*E on her debut single "City Lights", featuring MNEK's brother Bartoven, and she became one of MNEK's