Destin Conrad is this year’s Billboard R&B Rising Star.
The versatile singer accepted the award Wednesday night (Sept. 9) alongside Hip-Hop Rising Star Samara Cyn and Caribbean Rising Star Skippa.
Just this year, Conrad has already released two projects under two different genres. First, he dropped the jazz record wHIMSY! in April, and he then followed that up in August with the reggae album ROADRUNNER. And this is after he put out his impressive Grammy-nominated R&B album LOVE ON DIGITAL in 2025 and had an early co-signer in Billboard‘s 2026 R&B Artist of the Year Kehlani who introduced her to his manager, 2026 Billboard Executive of the Year David Ali.
In his speech, the Florida singer talked about how even though he might venture into other genres, he always finds himself coming back to R&B.
“It’s an incredible honor to receive the 2026 R&B Rising Star Award,” he began. “Thank you so much to Billboard for thinking of me for this. R&B music has played such a foundational role in my life — music as a whole, really — but the different genres have given me different backdrops to explore many facets of who I am, and they’ve inspired me to sing and write and create. But R&B has always been the foundation that I come back to. There’s something about the honesty in R&B that I feel like I gravitate towards and there’s something very free about the genre that’s always encouraging me to trust my own ear.”
He then referenced the three projects mentioned earlier and spoke on how R&B remained the foundation that connected them together.
“Over the last year, I put out three different bodies of work,” he continued. “Three albums all coming from the same place of intuition, curiosity and honesty and just wanting to have fun whether that was wHIMSY!, my jazz album, or this new one ROADRUNNER, the dancehall-esqe album. I think what’s so exciting about R&B right now is the foundation is so strong, but there’s so much room to push it and reshape it and take it somewhere unexpected. And I’m appreciative of the generation of artists that are showing how balanced music can be and I’m grateful I get to be a part of it.”
Conrad then ended his speech by thanking his team, David Ali and Kehlani for believing in him.
“Thank you to Billboard and thank you to my team Above Ground,” he said. “Make some noise for David Ali, I don’t know where he is, but I’m also really spoiled to have such an amazing team. Shout-out to Kehlani for introducing me to him.”
Watch Destin’s full acceptance speech below.