SiR

Stretching his yearning vocals out over hazy, understated instrumentals, SiR forges his own brand of virtuosic, streetwise, indie R&B. Born Sir Darryl Farris in Inglewood, California, in 1986, the singer, songwriter and producer was practically destined for music, and that actually held him back at first. His mother sang backup for Michael Jackson, his uncle played bass for Prince and his older brothers were working songwriters—SiR didn’t want to do anything by default. Creativity got the better of him, though, and by his early 20s, SiR found himself writing for soul legend Anita Baker. She encouraged him to pursue his own path as an artist and he made good on that advice with his master thesis of an opening statement, 2015’s Seven Sundays. The album not only revealed his unhurried, intoxicating style of romantic songcraft, but also a unique sound partially triangulated by the fact that contributors included blunted beatsmith Knxwledge and one of the greatest jazz drummers on the planet, Chris Dave. Such flexes did not go unnoticed—SiR’s heady 2018 album, November, came out on the West Coast’s home for cutting-edge rap and R&B, Top Dawg Entertainment, and found him exploring the ins and outs of both love and genre. The following year, he teamed with chameleonic TDE superstar Kendrick Lamar and style-shifting legend Lil Wayne for Chasing Summer, an album that secured SiR’s spot in the vanguard of auteurs who don’t follow any path they didn’t lay out themselves.