Crystle Lightning
Lightning on theFemme Fatales red carpet
Born	Crystle Lea Lightning (1981-02-05)February 5, 1981 (age 44) Edmonton,Alberta, Canada
Occupation(s)	Recording artist, actress, DJ, Indigenous rights activist
Years active	1994–present
Label	1491 Nation

Crystle Lea Lightning (born February 5, 1981) is aFirst Nations film actress, musician, DJ, and hip-hop MC.

Lightning holdsdual citizenship with the United States and Canada. She is the daughter of director and actressGeorgina Lightning, and her brother is actorCody Lightning. A First Nations Hobbema/Enoch Cree artist, Crystle began performing inEdmonton,Alberta, when she was 4 years old before her family relocated to Hollywood, California, when she was 9.

Lightning started acting in 1994 and has been in several films, with her most notable role portrayingLori Piestewa inSaving Jessica Lynch. She played the lead role of Jo in3 Ninjas Knuckle Up (1995). Since then, she has been cast in a recurring role on the daytime NBC soapDays of Our Lives, played Chloe in 2005'sAmerican Pie Presents: Band Camp,The CW/BET/Paramount+'sThe Game (2006), the spinoff ofGirlfriends; and inOlder Than America (2008) alongsideBradley Cooper. She also voiced Jen, the girlfriend of the game's protagonist, Tommy, in the 2006 video gamePrey.

At the9th Canadian Screen Awards in 2021, she won the award forBest Actress in a Drama Series forTrickster.^[1]

Lightning is also anelectro houseDJ. Inspired by a mix performed by DJ Lady Tribe at a local Los Angeles nightspot, Lightning sought a musical apprenticeship with Christi Mills, later partnering with her mentor to form a performance crew called Ladies of the House.^{[citation needed]} They perform regularly at Los Angeles venues, as well as throughout the United States.^{[citation needed]}

Moving from the DJ booth to the center-stage mic, Lightning paired up with MC RedCloud to form the hip-hop group LightningCloud. The pair released their self-titled debut,LightningCloud, in 2012 with RedCloud's long-term musical collaborator, DJ Hydroe.^{[citation needed]} Sam Slovik ofL.A. Weekly called the group, "a near-earth object inventing new realms of the Electro-House-Hip-Hop revolution on the planet. Urban futurist[s], MC RedCloud and Crystle Lightning are L.A.'s subterranean Bonnie and Clyde."^{[citation needed]} The Aboriginal Peoples Choice Music Awards (APCMA) honored the group with recognition for Best Hip Hop Album in November 2012.^[2] In 2013, LightningCloud won the "Who's Next: Battle for the Best" contest onPower 106.^[3] As winners, LightningCloud received a cash prize, a performance withKendrick Lamar, and the honor of representing west coast hip hop againstHot 97'sBrooklyn-based east coast representative, Radamiz, in a freestyle battle inAustin, Texas, on March 15, 2013. After winning that MC battle,^[4] LightningCloud received the opportunity to work withTimbaland in the recording studio.

• Crystle Lightning atIMDb
• Official Website

• 1981 births
• Cree actresses
• Canadian emigrants to the United States
• Living people
• Actresses from Edmonton
• Musicians from Edmonton
• American child actresses
• American female models
• American film actresses
• 21st-century Canadian rappers
• Cree musicians
• Canadian child actresses
• Canadian film actresses
• 20th-century Canadian actresses
• 21st-century Canadian actresses
• 20th-century First Nations people
• 21st-century First Nations people
• 20th-century First Nations women
• 21st-century First Nations women
• Canadian women rappers
• Canadian female models
• Naturalized citizens of the United States
• Best Actress in a Drama Series Canadian Screen Award winners
• 21st-century American women
• 21st-century women rappers
• Enoch Cree Nation people

• Articles with short description
• Short description matches Wikidata
• Articles with hCards
• All articles with unsourced statements
• Articles with unsourced statements from April 2021