Long Beach, CA · r&b · soul

Giveon

1 festival played →

A baritone you can identify in one bar — slow-burning, orchestral R&B about love going quietly wrong, 'Heartbreak Anniversary' the calling card.

Giveon Dezmann Evans was born February 21, 1995, and raised in Long Beach, California, by a single mother alongside two brothers. He sang at birthday parties as a child, and his mother pushed him toward music partly to keep him away from the pressures of gang life and poverty in the neighborhood. He attended Long Beach Polytechnic High School.

At eighteen he took a music education program at the Grammy Museum, where he fell for Frank Sinatra's phrasing and Barry White's low register, alongside an existing love of Drake and 1960s jazz he wanted to update. He self-released his debut single, Garden Kisses, in 2018, and producer Sevn Thomas found him on SoundCloud and signed him to Epic Records.

His 2019 song Like I Want You reached number 87 on the Hot 100 and set up the EPs Take Time and When It's All Said and Done. Appearing on Drake's Chicago Freestyle in 2020 grew his audience quickly, and Heartbreak Anniversary became a quintuple-platinum hit that peaked at number 16.

He later sang alongside Daniel Caesar on Justin Bieber's Peaches, which topped the Hot 100, and joined Drake and Lil Durk on In the Bible, his second top-ten single. His debut album, Give or Take, arrived in 2022 and reached number 11 on the Billboard 200, followed by Beloved in 2025, which peaked at number 8.

Read more

r&bsoul