Destin Conrad Is Taking Classic R&B Sounds in Fearless New Directions: ‘I’m Genre-less, Boundless’

Exploring sounds ranging from alt-jazz to reggae, the 26-year-old Destin Conrad from Tampa, Fla., confidently approaches R&B as merely a starting point — and is attracting big-name fans with his own inimitable star quality.

Destin Conrad will take the stage at Billboard R&B Hip-Hop Live, Sept. 10 at Brooklyn Steel in New York City. Get your tickets here.

The Sound

With his sleek, emotive vocals, Conrad confidently navigates his kaleidoscopic soundscapes — and offers a welcome oasis from the frenetic digital world. “I like taking the things I love from R&B and applying them while exploring different genres,” he says. “I’m genre-less, boundless. But everything I do will always have an alternative tinge to it.”

The Breakthrough

After releasing four buzzy EPs beginning with 2021’s Colorway, Conrad dropped his debut album, Love on Digital, on Above Ground Entertainment/EMPIRE in April 2025. “It’s R&B through a different lens than what we view it in,” he told Billboard upon its release. “Loud. Queer.” The critically acclaimed project landed on multiple year-end lists — including topping Billboard’s staff-curated best R&B albums of 2025 — and earned the singer-songwriter his first Grammy Award nomination, for best progressive R&B album.

Chart Bona Fides

No doubt fueled by the success of Love on Digital, Conrad’s next album, the alt-jazz wHIMSY, arrived just four months later last August and marked his Billboard album chart debut, starting at No. 3 on Contemporary Jazz Albums.

The Cosigns

Kehlani was an early Conrad booster, initially collaborating with him as a writer on three songs for her second studio album, 2020’s It Was Good Until It Wasn’t. Conrad co-wrote six songs across her next two albums, and she returned the favor with a guest spot on Love on Digital’s playful “Bad Bitches.” For wHIMSY, Conrad assembled a dream team of musical friends including Terrace Martin, James Fauntleroy and Keyon Harrold. And in June, as a best new artist nominee at the BET Awards, Conrad met Janet Jackson, who later gave him an Instagram shout-out.

R&B Rules

“My sister put me onto a lot of classic albums by Alicia Keys, Usher and other R&B staples. Something I really admire about R&B is the vulnerability. I love how honest it can be lyrically. The cutthroatness of it alongside the emotional really inspires me. Like the line on Usher’s ‘Confessions Part II’ when he’s telling the girl that he got the other girl pregnant … you can make a song sound so pretty and be so harsh. He’s being honest about it, even if he wasn’t honest in the beginning. But he’s being emotionally honest and vulnerable in the music. The songs I write that I relate to the most are the ones where I’m being the most vulnerable.”

Rising to the Challenge

“What comes easy is writing. I’ve always loved to write, even when I was a kid. English was a subject I never had trouble with. My favorite thing in school was getting an essay prompt and writing about that; my brain would just, like, go. Putting words together comes easy to me within songwriting. Something that’s been harder for me is learning who I am as a performer. You have to kind of learn how to be a showman. That’s something I’m still figuring out.”

Up Next

Conrad’s just-released foray into reggae, Roadrunner, is close to his heart as his mother is from Jamaica. “If you asked me what I’d be doing next when I was making the jazz album, I probably couldn’t have told you,” Conrad admits. “Maybe after this reggae album, I’ll go back to my R&B roots. But who knows? It’s just whatever I’m feeling like at the time.”

This story appears in the Aug. 22, 2026, issue of Billboard.