Opening Up

SiR NEVER INTENDED on becoming an R&B star: Although the 35-year-old singer was born in Inglewood, Calif., into a musical family (his brothers are artists D Smoke and Davion), he worked full-time at LA Fitness, only taking a chance on music after getting married at 22. “I started to test the waters, and the shit went crazy,” he says. Since his last album, Chasing Summer, arrived in 2019, life has provided its fair share of tests — from the birth of his first child to relationship struggles with his longtime partner and battling drug addiction — all experiences that the

Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE) signee unpacks on his fourth, as-yet-untitled full-length, out this fall. As he puts it: “During a lot of what was the worst for me, I was creating.”

What was life like between Chasing Summer and your new album?

We were going through the pandemic, so a lot of ups and downs, a lot of anxiety. I definitely had a lot of time to reflect on some poor choices and learn from my mistakes. The best thing that happened through all of this was that I was being creative. I was using my pain as fuel for this album ... The weight I feel being a husband, a father, being SiR and how much those things contradict each other.

Since signing with TDE in 2016 and RCA in 2019, how has your experience with each label been?

We’re still a full roster. TDE is doing fine. You got artists like Doechii coming up — I love her music and her hustle. Then there’s Ray Vaughn, a rapping machine. Throughout the whole pandemic we were all working. There’s a new sense of team camaraderie since the beginning of 2022. [With RCA], I was a [label president] Peter Edge fan before any of this; nobody really knows that. The first time I got introduced to his work was when I was digging into that “Stan” sample from Dido. He was already president of RCA when I found this out. Seeing how humble he is and how much he’s still connected to the music made my decision really easy.

There are thematic similarities between your album and TDE superstar Kendrick Lamar’s Mr.

Morale & The Big Steppers. Did you know that before his album came out?

I’m used to hearing some of the records before they come out, but I hadn’t heard any of that music. The first listen was dense. The second time, I noticed on [“Mirror”] he says, “I choose me, I’m sorry.” That’s how I feel sometimes when I’m pulled between being this [other] person or being myself. A whole bunch of those songs hit home for me. I’m honored the universe allowed our albums to be so similar, because it means that it’s time for the world to hear that kind of stuff.