Destin Conrad is in transition. When NME catches up with the 25-year-old, he’s in the middle of a coastal move. “I’m two days into my move back to Los Angeles,” he laughs. The exhaustion is written all over his face, but there are silver linings: Conrad has already had more recording sessions than he ever did on the East Coast. “I was in Brooklyn for two years and I went to the studio there three times.”
Conrad is cognisant of what he wants and needs in order to thrive at this “critical” time in his career. Last year, the Tampa native released his debut album, ‘Love On Digital’, which earned a Grammy nomination for Best Progressive R&B Album. But he didn’t stop there, dropping the surprise jazz follow-up ‘wHIMSY’ (which just got a deluxe edition earlier this month). Asked how he feels about the acclaim, he sinks into a moment of contemplation, then declares: “Destin is happy.” He removes his palm from his forehead, finding his train of thought: “It makes me eager and hungry.”
Destin Conrad is on The Cover of NME. Credit: Ryder for NME
The range of emotions and vulnerability that Destin shows across ‘Love On Digital’ and ‘wHIMSY’ reflects a man that’s not only wise beyond his years, but intrepid in his ability to canvas every thought, desire, insecurity and fear. “Let’s cut to the chase, I wanna kiss, I wanna touch, I wanna love on you,” he croons on the song ‘Delusional’, single-minded in his quest for both lust and love. “It’s always been easy for me to reflect on my experiences,” he explains. “It doesn’t feel like a barrier to overcome to share.” It’s this approach to songwriting that not only makes Conrad convincing, but endearing among his peers – he’s not afraid to show, tell and vent.
Conrad has become a key voice in contemporary R&B, whose ongoing resurgence has been marked by a cluster of critical releases – including former NME Cover star Coco Jones’ ‘ICU’, Muni Long’s ‘Made For Me’ and Leon Thomas’ ‘Mutt’. An undeniable fleet of queer artists have added dimension to the genre’s renewal: Kehlani and Durand Bernarr (both of whom dominated a large proportion of the R&B categories at this year’s Grammys), alongside Kwn, Sasha Keable, Victoria Monét and, now, Destin Conrad are foundational figures in this ecosystem. “I feel blessed to even be part of this shift,” Conrad says, his tender smile echoing his gratitude. “It’s really cool to have community and have the shared experiences we can all talk about.”
“I just learned how to be a performer within the past five years, and I’m still learning”
Across his late childhood and adolescence, Conrad entertained Gen-Z and Millennial netizens as a Vine star. But his eventual vocation as a singer was hidden in plain sight, even prior to social media success: a YouTube video dating back to 2007 featured a then-seven-year-old Conrad singing Alicia Keys’ ‘No One’. “My mom went and got a camcorder and said, ‘After school, we’re gonna record this,’” he recalls. “She was the only one who saw it for me, that’s why we moved to LA when I was 11.” There, he’d enter the creative arts, enrolling at the Debbie Allen Dance Academy and joining their jazz choir.
Conrad’s fourth EP, the second instalment in his ‘Submissive’ series, celebrates his mother on ‘Mum’s Story’. In the interlude, she recalls a story about being woken up via voice-note. “I put it on there ’cause my mom was starting to tell me things because I was getting older just about her life,” he says. “She would be like, ‘When you get older I’ll tell you’, and now I’m at that age where I’m finding out the family secrets.”
Credit: Ryder for NME
His relationship with not just his mother, but his sister, Janique, keep him grounded as he navigates various time zones, regions and personalities – they also remind him of his Floridian roots. “Janique is a ki, she’s so funny, she’s ghetto, she’s real. Tampa’s like that, a lot of attitude, she’s the life of the party.” The singer’s recollections of Tampa feel adjacent to his peer Doechii’s: both hail from the same town, with the rapper’s popular 2024 Swamp Sessions series echoing the same attitude, bravado and transparency that Conrad talks about now. “Doechii is so Tampa,” he agrees. “The conversations we have, we just get it, we see each other.”
Like most teenagers, Conrad spent his formative years trying an array of different things. Despite an inner tug towards music, he moved back to Tampa after Vine shut down in 2017, helping to design T-shirts for a local vendor. “I’m still kind of into fashion and design now,” he says. One flick across the musician’s Instagram corroborates this, the Amiri and Theophilo pieces he’d wear during his ‘wHIMSY’ tour as proof.
Credit: Ryder for NME
It was during this period at the clothing store that his close friend and current roommate, Edward, encouraged his musical pursuits. “It was a backbone for me. He’s not even a friend anymore: that’s family, it’s my chosen family.” Alongside this friendship were industry advocates in both Ambré and Kehlani, who helped create some of his first ‘industry’ memories. The duo’s support would go a long way in quelling his self-doubt, helping garnish him in studio experience and build his confidence – first as a songwriter, then artist – in real time.
“I actually think it was Ambré that took me to the studio for the first time. It was all so new at the time, but I remember knowing that I wanted to be there, it felt right.” Conrad would earn some of his first credits as a songwriter in 2019 (Ambré’s ‘Band Practice’) and 2020 (Kehlani’s ‘Water’), leading to his 2021 inaugural EP ‘Colorway’, a lucid project with a textured quirk throughout (partly due to the humorous interludes).
Long-term collaborator Louie Lastic, a central architect of ‘Colorway’, guided Conrad throughout the recording process. “There’s so much about song structure that I just didn’t know. He really captured the hook, verse, pre-chorus, chorus, each of those for me, and took time with it.” It’s no wonder that Conrad’s voluptuous runs sound seasoned across the release, his confident charm buoying the EP’s canny dissection of a twentysomething’s worldview.
Credit: Ryder for NME
Little has changed with how Conrad navigates social media today, even as he becomes more visible as a musician and artist. His Vine videos, now artefacts, operated in the truth of a situation or scenario – and his current posts still bask in this same truth. This time, however, they act as a call-and-response with his audience, Conrad not only conscious of the conversations around him but directly responding to commentary.
His recent Tiny Desk performance, for example, drew light criticism, particularly of his vocal delivery. In response, he acknowledged his nerves, but noted he had fun. A month later, Conrad asked fans to “let him grow” following his Indiana Pacers vs New York Knicks halftime show performance. In his opinion, he understands and welcomes critique, and he’s equally critical of himself.
“It’s really cool to have [the R&B] community and have shared experiences we can all talk about”
“The thing is: before you know something wasn’t my best, I knew it 10 times as much,” he begins, leaning back. “I kind of just learned how to be a performer within the past five years, and I’m still learning.” He recalls one of his first performances in Los Angeles’ Leimert Park, which was “terrible”, but necessary for his development. “I needed to do that performance to get better. Obviously, I’m not going to sit here and lie, sometimes the comments do hurt, but sometimes they don’t. I just want to explain myself when there’s things to be said.”
With social media, access to the wider world exists at our fingertips – various cultures, genres and dances can be surfaced in seconds. Conrad, however, is keen on pursuing his interests in the real world. He’s a regular visitor to the UK, forging a tangible community in the country’s blossoming present-day R&B sphere. From collaborations with Bellah, Sasha Keable and Nia Smith, to appearing at Kwn’s LA show, to a headline slot at Recessland 2026, Conrad is not only immersed in contemporary R&B on this side of the pond, but fiercely invested in the genre’s advocates, particularly the women of the scene.
Credit: Ryder for NME
“Like, I just got put onto the Sugababes,” he says shyly. “You guys have such a specific way about R&B, it’s specific to your culture but I love it. I trust you guys’ taste. Every time I’m outside, I learn something new. I gravitate towards it more each trip. There’s a different sort of appreciation I have for it. I gravitate to things I don’t know and want to know more about. So I fuck with London, I fuck with y’all, I’m always learning.”
Anyone invested in Destin Conrad’s career would tell you that a similar curiosity with jazz has coloured his career. Beyond the smoky ‘wHIMSY’, traces of this fascination could be heard across early projects in his discography, like 2022’s ‘Nobody Knows’ and 2023s ‘Low Tide’, teasing his eventual embrace of the genre. “I feel like I may do another jazz project again in a few years,” he frankly announces. But on his next album, well underway at the time of our conversation, he’ll bend his sound once again – in a direction he says no one will see coming.
“[‘wHIMSY’] really opened the door for me to explore genres. So I’m doing that again, going to other places I haven’t before,” he says coyly. “I always learn the most in new environments and that’s what we’re going to do here.”
Destin Conrad’s ‘wHIMSY!’ is out now via EMPIRE.
Listen to Destin Conrad’s exclusive playlist to accompany The Cover below on Spotify or on Apple Music here.
Words: Nicolas-Tyrell Scott
Photography: Ryder
Styling: Xavier Means
Grooming: Nneoma Nwaka
Location: Take Space Studio
Label: Empire
The post Destin Conrad: an R&B adventurer who’s hungry for more appeared first on NME.
