Gospel singer Isaac Carree was born April 29, 1973 and grew up in North Carolina, where he began singing solos in church (his mother was a pastor at New Beginnings Community Outreach Church in Greensboro, North Carolina). Possessing a fine tenor voice, Carree later sang in John P. Kee's V.I.P. Choir before leaving to form the gospel quartet Men of Standard with Michael Bacon, Bryan Pierce, and Lowell Pye (the group later became a trio with the departure of Bacon). The group signed to the Malaco Records subsidiary Muscle Shoals and released four critically acclaimed albums on the imprint between 1996 and 2004 before releasing a fifth album on Columbia Records in 2006. During a Men of Standard hiatus, Carree recorded and released a solo album, Uncommon Me, late in the summer of 2011.