702 Learns To Sing Through Grief After Irish Grinstead’s Death

702‘s LeMisha Fields and Meelah Williams are learning to sing through the loss of Irish Grinstead. As their first album turns 30, its songs mean more to them than they did as teens.

Fields told Las Vegas Weekly that she chose to keep singing to honor her late sister, rather than stay locked in grief.

“She would want us to continue and live out the legacy of 702. It’s a bittersweet kind of thing,” Fields said.

Irish died at 43 in September 2023. Fields lost both a sister and a voice she knew from the stage. The pair had grown up together, then built their careers in the same group. Their family had also lost Irish’s twin, Orish. A founding member of 702, she died in April 2008 at 27.

Both Fields and Williams are now moms. Williams said love, loss and heartbreak had changed what “Get It Together” meant to her. It was no longer just the sad breakup song she knew as a girl. Back then, they split their time between school and the studio.

“Get It Together” came out on “No Doubt,” the group’s first album. Motown and Biv 10 Records released it on October 8, 1996. The song reached No. 10 on the Billboard Hot 100. A tale of love in trouble had taken the group far beyond its Las Vegas home.

Missy Elliott joined them on “Steelo.” Donell Jones and The Characters also helped make the album, which went gold. It holds the songs they are singing now. Both hits date to that first album, before the later losses that changed the group.

The music has found new life through Summer Walker, too. She sampled “Get It Together” on “Body,” from her 2019 debut “Over It.” When her label shared the video in January 2021, it pointed to that link with 702. The sample brought the group’s work into a new R&B star’s song.

Williams said young fans told them they heard 702 through their parents.

The duo will mark 30 years at On the Record at Park MGM on October 23. A skate night at Skate Rock City follows October 24.