Durand Bernarr can’t recall the last time he had eight hours of sleep. “I feel like there was one or two nights within the past 30 days where I got some serious rest, but it is so far in between. But eight hours? That’s that Mariah Carey slumber,” Bernarr quips over Zoom from his Los Angeles home. “I just ate breakfast,” he says. “I literally have my ‘ancestry prayer’ ready and rolled, so we’re going to make sure we get the spirit moving.”
Bernarr has been in full gear since winning his first Grammy in February, when he took home the Best Progressive R&B Album award for his third LP, BLOOM. Within 48 hours of his victory, Bernarr was back in the studio. He was initially going to record five songs for a deluxe edition of BLOOM that soon evolved into a new body of work, BERNARR, which dropped May 1. “There were so many producers and writers coming in that you would’ve been under the impression that they had the intent of a whole project,” he says. “We couldn’t just choose five.”
But there were deeper, more provocative topics Bernarr wanted to explore that wouldn’t fit within BLOOM’s celebration of growth through platonic community. “I didn’t want to talk about spicy stuff on the album,” he says. “I was like, ‘I needed something where the spicy stuff could live. Why don’t we scrap the deluxe and combine all of that together?’”
Born Bernarr Durand Ferebee, Jr., the singer arrives on BERNARRfully inhabiting his name and its legacy. “BERNARR is me honoring where I come from while fully stepping into who I am today,” he said in a previous statement. “My father gave me the foundation, my village gave me the language and every collaborator on this album helped me expand the conversation.” The 17-track album features production by heavy hitters, including Bryan-Michael Cox, James Fauntleroy, Johntá Austin, Raphael Saadiq and Troy Taylor, plus songwriting support from Kandi Burruss, Miguel and Sevyn Streeter.
Within 48 hours of winning your first Grammy, you were back in the studio to work on more music. Do you feel like you’ve relished in the moment?
I look at moments of relishing, like I do with sleep. It’s pockets of sleep, not necessarily rest, where your body can get up on its own. There’s an alarm clock that has to get you prepared and whatnot. So when we can find those times of not having to be at the mercy of our alarm clocks, that’s rest.
You’ve been putting out music for the last two decades. You started the 2020s with your DUR& album, and now six years later, we’re at BERNARR. Who was the person who made DUR& and who is he now on this album?
DUR& is me figuring out, “OK, I’ve been a dope singer this whole time. I know how to approach certain things, but here’s my introduction to the world now that I have my recipe for what is me and what could at least garner your attention.” Because who is this talking about some, “I’m tide of you niglets.” Who is using niglets in a song? So the sheer animation of it, from “Mixxed,” “Stuck” and “Relocate,” I felt like I was trying to prove something like, “Look, y’all! Look what I can do.” BERNARR is more so, “Please make yourself comfortable at the table. I’ve been waiting on you. Take the cover off the plates. We are on the estate.”
What started off as a deluxe morphed into a full-length album. Sonically, what did you want to achieve with BERNARR?
I wanted to do some stuff I hadn’t done before; that’s always my main thing. Sonically, it’s about whatever feels good to the listener. I don’t have any expectations about what people feel the music is. I just want them to feel it. It’s a time capsule. It’s very much funk, rock, pop, R&B. I feel like this would be my magnum opus as far as R&B is concerned. It’s a well-rounded body of work telling so many different stories: still talking about love within our friendships, a little more introspective now because there’s a lot that’s been going on, so I need to get folks caught up with what I’ve been going through and where I’m going and things like that.
On “Undivided,” you sing about the demands and sacrifices that come with being booked and busy. How are you balancing it now? Do you feel like you’re on a chase, a skip, a walk?
I feel like each time I’m handed a baton, it’s a different style of movement. There could be one where, at the beginning, we are sprinting, and by the time I get around the second one, we can do the fast walking — I can kind of catch my breath a little bit. In some areas, I feel like I’m staying on top of things; in other areas, my text messages are in shambles. It’s like, if I let one day go by, I’m at 300 now. It is frustrating when you’re always with your folks, and then there’s a time when your career and the decisions you have made for yourself have taken you away, and you don’t have idle time to chat. As much as I want to, it’s the supply and demand, and even goes down to having to go and happen to the world while your homies are at home doing regular shit, going to brunch and having kickbacks and sleepovers — not y’all having fun without me! It is the weirdest kind of FOMO. I am out happening to the world. I am people’s escape, and I want my own escape.
You have been on a roll with an impeccable press run. Every time I turned around, it was another interview, which I love because it opens us up to more of you outside of the music.
And here’s the thing, too: I hear my people when they say, “Durand, you need to take a vacation. You need to go get somebody. You need to take a nap.” I was like, “I hear y’all.” However, if I take a nap right now — the nap that I know I deserve — while some of these opportunities are coming down the pipeline and I said no to them, y’all would be sick and so would I. It’s like, “No, cousin needs his thing, give cousin his things!” So, it’s about the balance of being OK with the little pockets of stillness and quiet time I do have.
Speaking of stillness, on “Sleep,” you sing: “And the dream won’t let me sleep…”
“Sleep” was the last song added. Out of the 16 songs we pieced together, we kept the listener in mind for all of the records. It’s like, “OK, we have that. Where’s the record I wanted for myself, where I wasn’t thinking about anyone else and what they would like?” The moment “Sleep” was presented to me, Chokolate wrote that record, I said, “Oh, this is for me, and if someone happens to hear it and they enjoy it, that’s beautiful, but this was for me.” The moment I heard the music, I saw myself on a road trip on the highway with beautiful scenery. I’m hanging half my body out the window, taking in the fresh air. I love it. It’s feeling so many different things all at once, the adrenaline from moving so fast and the exhaustion of, “Oh my God, I wish I could lay down here for just five minutes.”
On “Sugar Family,” you address the reality of the economic struggle from the cost of gas to the price of eggs. It’s such a timely record, considering everything happening right now. What’s the story behind that record?
I made a video around 2018 or 2019. I was like, “Y’all, times is so hard. They said they want a sugar daddy. No, I need a sugar family! We need mama, daddy, the aunties, the uncles, the cousins, the godfathers and the dog too. All hands on deck.” When I first heard the music, I was like, “Can we just be unserious for a moment?” I wanted to discuss the times we’re living in. Times are so hard that Sugar Daddy is low on sugar. I thought that it was a clever way to talk about how we are going through it.
Raphael [Saadiq] was like, “I made this for you the day before you came to the studio. This hasn’t been on anybody else’s desk.” And I was like, “Oh, stop. But yes, keep going!” From there, he brought a friend of his, Tara. I love it when people just get me. When you get my humor and my approach, that’s extra bonus points. If you can access your inner child to come play with my inner child, oh, baby, we’re in there. It was so seamless creating the story. And of course, I had to have Raphael in the background somewhere.
“Waiting” features Big Sean and feels like a summer party record. What was it like putting that track together?
That’s my shit! When I tell you, “Waiting” has been such a process, and I’ve just been keeping my fingers crossed that everything lined up. There are a lot of people involved in the production of the record. It was also a record Big Sean was adamant about: “No, I want a record with you because I want you on a record of mine. So I want to make sure I get you something too.” When we first started piecing the song together, I didn’t know it was for me. I’m thinking that this was for his project. So I’m up here helping him. He was like, “Nah, that’s for you.” So he laid down his verse, and Kandi helped write my verse. I’ve never done a record like this before. I really love that I cannot wait to hear that on huge speakers outside somewhere.
“My Life” is an instant standout that recalls the mid-2000s R&B power ballads that producers Bryan-Michael Cox and Johntá Austin were behind, who also worked on this song. What did they bring out of you in the studio?
If “We Belong Together” and “Be Without You” had a nephew, that’s “My Life.” This was the first song I’ve ever punched through the entire thing. Usually, I’m singing through one take because I’m considering how I’m going to approach this live. I remember trying to sing the song from the top to get to the hook, and I’m out of breath before I get there. I’m like, “What is going on here?” They’re like, “Durand, that’s how the R&B records are.”
My main thing was making sure the producers and writers were pleased — specifically Troy [Taylor], when he was taking me through how he wanted the inflections to go. I feel that artists like Joe would appreciate a record like that. When you talk about men who have those full chest ministries, Joe Thomas, I would love to hear what he would think about the record. When I hear that song, I think about songs like “All The Things.” I mean, of course, I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about love, but more on the Luther side — the passion behind it, with a Joe approach.
When you think back to making BERNARR, what did you take away from this experience?
If anything, I’ve taken away more relationships with people I want to work with in the near future, who have brought things out of me and ways to approach things that I thought were really beautiful, effective and true to me. This process has also shown me that it’s important to hear your own thoughts, because when you have a lot of ideas coming at you at once, it’s easy to second-guess yourself.
Stream Durand Bernarr’sBERNARRhere.
Featured Image Credit: Juan Veloz