Houston Kendrick

WNXP’s Nashville Artist of the Month for April, 2021, is Houston Kendrick, a singer, songwriter and producer of cloudy, sumptuous R&B with a feel for the evocative power of conversational detail. He glides airily through his delicately interlaced vocal parts, then shifts into the knowing swagger of his rapped interludes, all the while talking back to narrow perceptions of young, Black, southern masculinity and sketching out whole other thought lives of ennui, exploration and pleasure. Growing up in a Birmingham, Al. suburb, he made as close a study of theatricality–lived personas and scripted acting roles alike–as he did of the many varieties of gospel, pop, hip-hop and R&B he took in through parents, peers, the church and the internet. It was while studying commercial voice at Belmont in Nashville that he began sharpening his artistic vantage point, and after a string of independent releases—his Pink mixtape, his EP Young Rudy’s Speech Vol. 1 and various loosies—he completed his immersive, home-recorded first album, Small Infinity, during the pandemic.