Khamari

Living in his own world has served soulful singer-songwriter Khamari well. Since picking up the violin at four years old, he spent his childhood determined to craft his own sound and his own voice. He was gifted a keyboard by his jazz-obsessed grandfather and began classical training in the piano, clarinet, flute, French horn, and guitar. He didn’t even seek out contemporary music by his newer influences like Kendrick Lamar and J. Cole until he had dropped out of college, instead focusing on his own work. Khamari spent a semester at the prestigious Berklee College of Music before deciding to branch out on his own as an artist, honing his own calming, visceral R&B with nods to old soul and alt-rock. He independently released his first EP, Eldorado to acclaim in 2020, then, in 2023 came his major label debut, A Brief Nirvana. Its standouts “Doctor, My Eyes” and “These Four Walls” have powerfully earned nearly 50 million streams combined on Spotify alone. Written in the isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic’s early days, the pained vulnerability and weathered optimism of A Brief Nirvana still resonates with scores of fans. While he supported the album with some of his first live performances on an intimate, sold-out tour, listeners would show him tattoos inspired by his music and tell him stories of how it helped them cope. Khamari’s latest efforts are testament to the ways he’s branched out since A Brief Nirvana, settling in a reinvigorated and sprawling Los Angeles as a Boston native, breaking out of his comfort zone, and nurturing relationships new and old. His new single “Head in a Jar” is a reflective, acoustic fantasy that finds Khamari wanting more from someone than they’re willing to give. “I try my best not to trip but these walls are paper thin/Every now and then I hear voices in the wind/The floors creak, the death of what could have been,” he sings, imagining himself a literal item on a forgone lover’s nightstand, kept close but never close enough. “We’ve all had situations where you feel someone’s not able to appreciate you in the way that you want to be appreciated,” he says. The song’s sample-like, titular refrain is a throughline to the hip-hop indebted production of A Brief Nirvana. There, he pulled from classics like Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good,” Al Green’s “Love and Happiness,” and Darondo’s “Didn’t I,” songs that were a guiding light for him. In his newer music though, Khamari is leaning into even richer and more robust musical tapestry, with “Head In a Jar” as a bridge between his past and evolution. “In an era where everything is getting more and more electronic, quantized, and produced, it was important for me to continue to keep my pace, to be very authentic to what feels natural to me,” says Khamari. Inspired by a broad swath of icons – including Red Hot Chili Peppers, Stevie Wonder, Mazzy Star, D’Angelo, Marvin Gaye, Jeff Buckley, and even his favorite movie director Christopher Nolan – Khamari’s new music takes a more out-of-the-box approach to storytelling, with the always-autobiographical writer putting on new perspectives, embodying new characters, and chronicling the universal quest for fulfilment to get to the root of his own emotional truth. Still one to retreat into himself, he started many of these songs solo, from the sanctuary of his living room, with just his thoughts and keys. He’s then brought his self-recorded demos to talented collaborators to build out his visions of even deeper moods and bolder sounds, co-producinguntil they’ve told his stories perfectly. Khamari is continuously challenging himself and convention as he’s become one of R&B’s best new voices.