Oshawa, ON · r&b · soul

Daniel Caesar

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Canadian R&B with gospel bones — sparse arrangements built entirely around the voice, 'Best Part' devotion delivered at a whisper.

Daniel Caesar was born Ashton Simmonds on April 5, 1995, in Scarborough, and raised in Oshawa, Ontario, the second eldest of four children. His father, Norwill Simmonds, was a gospel singer who had released an album as a high school student in Jamaica, and the family attended a Seventh-day Adventist church, where Caesar sang before the congregation from a young age.

At seventeen, a fight with his father around his high school graduation left him briefly homeless. He began gigging around Toronto and connected with producers Jordan Evans and Matthew Burnett, building an independent following through the EPs Praise Break (2014) and Pilgrim's Paradise (2015) before releasing the album Freudian in 2017.

His music pairs restrained, largely guitar- and keyboard-based arrangements with gospel-derived harmony, leaving considerable space around the vocal. Freudian featured Kali Uchis, H.E.R., Syd and Charlotte Day Wilson, and was shortlisted for the Polaris Music Prize; the duet with H.E.R., "Best Part," won Caesar a Grammy Award.

He followed it with Case Study 01 in 2019, longlisted for the Polaris Prize, then appeared on Justin Bieber's "Peaches" alongside Giveon in 2021, his first US number-one single. Never Enough arrived in 2023 on Republic Records and brought a second Juno Award, with fourth album Son of Spergy in 2025 becoming his first to reach the Billboard 200.

Beyond his own records, Caesar has recorded with Brandy, Ty Dolla Sign, Summer Walker, Common, Omar Apollo and Bon Iver, and written songs for Mary J. Blige, SZA, Tyler, the Creator, Shawn Mendes and Kanye West.

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