Drinking coffee with Duckwrth, the neo-soul crooner who wants to start a punk band

"His bro is like, 'Yo, take your fucking mask off. You're already here,'" Duckwrth continued, a mischievous grin creeping across his face. "And then a girl grabs him."

If Duckwrth's new album were to soundtrack a movie, that's how it would start.

I asked him to describe the storyboard when we met for coffee in Brooklyn last month, a few days following his sold-out concert at the Bowery Ballroom. Out of six proposed locations, he selected Sincerely, Tommy, a Black-owned boutique and café in Bed-Stuy.

As we sat on the bench outside, the sherbert-haired singer fulfilled my request without a hint of hesitation - giving the distinct impression that he'd watched that scene unfold several times already.

Just before kicking off his fall tour, Duckwrth released "SG8*" as a follow-up to his August 2020 album "SuperGood." The eight-song project explores the post-lockdown collision of anxiety and hedonism, but isn't shy about the latter reigning supreme.

In the opening song, Duckwrth swiftly assumes the role of ringmaster: "Pull up at nine / And if you want, you can go tell a friend." In the standout fourth track, "Mask Off (Feelings)," he puts it even blunter: "I won't be idle anymore / And I'm fresh out of patience."

The delivery is indelicate by design. Duckwrth, 33, wrote the album's first song in November 2020, but the concept truly took shape in the spring. As the weather grew warmer and the promise of a vaccine grew stronger, he was captivated by our collective hunger - for normalcy, sure, but also something more feral that went largely unsaid.

Duckwrth's previous album was recorded in a month-long period of self-imposed fasting: no alcohol, no drugs, and no sex. This time around, he went with impulse over discipline.

"Janelle Monáe was throwing all these crazy parties. She invited me to her last one and I was just like, 'Janelle, I need to be there, but I'm scared as fuck,'" he explained in a reverent whisper. "But I was looking at everybody and I feel like all I was hearing people say was, 'I don't want to be safe no more.' I was like, 'Yeah, let me put that in a song.'"

Duckwrth, who studied graphic design at San Francisco's Academy of Art University, spent upwards of 15 hours manipulating the image. He added a scenic photo to the background, replete with mountains and clouds, then rendered the vista unrecognizable.

After an extended period of indoor isolation, many of us can relate. The world may no longer look the same to some of us - more volatile, perhaps, yet technicolor.

During Duckwrth's live shows, fans chant the lyrics to "We Outside" like they're casting a spell: "We back outside / We ain't tryna go back in." Concerts have always been a rarefied space, where everyone has at least one thing in common. These days, that common thread - coming together to dance, sing, and be connected by music - feels like actual magic.

At Bowery Ballroom, surrounded by impossibly chic outfits and confident auras, it occurred to me that Duckwrth is particularly skilled in this sorcery. His live shows are packed with people who understand that his music is not just a sonic experience, but a visual one, too.

"What's tight is that everybody at my shows is just so colorful and bold," he said. When I joke that everyone in attendance was also attractive, he laughed at the sentiment.

"Yes. I'm so happy to curate a moment of hot people," he said, eyes glinting playfully.

But that's not to say getting back on the road didn't come with its challenges.

Since the release of "SuperGood" last year, described by critics as "a west coast summer breeze" (The Guardian) and "a vibrant sonic collage of escapism" (NME), Duckwrth has been forced to reckon with a shift in his media coverage: from eclectic rapper to R&B star-on-the-rise.

"There are far better singers than me. I'm more of a crooner and like, there's motherfuckers who really sing," he mused. "So I went into these shows like, 'Damn, how am I going to be in this space and fulfill these expectations of me being an R&B artist now?'"

"I'm like, 'Me?' I came into it back in the day doing backpack rap," he added. "So that's very new."

Duckwrth, whose birth name is Jared Lee, was raised in "a gospel family," always surrounded by instruments and vocalists. But growing up, he wasn't very serious about music. He dabbled with choir, though he doesn't remember how long he stuck with it, and began playing the tuba when he was in middle school. Why tuba? "Because I wanted to be different," he explained, matter-of-factly.

He began making his own music in college, using an altered version of his mom's maiden name, Duckworth. (He dropped the "O" because he "didn't like the way it looked logo-wise.")

After building a modest reputation as a rapper in the Bay Area, mostly by participating in friendly freestyle competitions known as "Cyphers," he released his debut mixtape "DUCKTAPE" online in 2012.

Though he's since moved towards sparkly synths and silky vocals, the spirit of counterculture continues to pulse at the core of his work.

Duckwrth doesn't much care for comparisons or labels - though he does nod enthusiastically when I describe his music as "jambalaya-style."

"We are the new neo-soul, I guess. We're the generation that came from the Erykah Badus," he mused. "But also, we are the iTunes generation. Before iPods, you were a B-boy, you were a punk, you were a gangster, you were a scene kid. You were a this or a that. And then after iPods, it's okay for you to go from fucking Dead Kennedys, to Lauryn Hill, to Three Six Mafia."

"We were able to take all those music genres and put them into one basket. I like that. My spinal cord is punk, but I'm known as an R&B artist now."

Would he ever make a pure punk album? "For sure," he replied immediately. "I already have it planned out."

The side-project will be called Good Soldier, he revealed. It'll likely take a cue from the animated band Gorillaz, so fans can scream and mosh without feeling like they're at "a classic Duckwrth show."

As always, he's started planning every visual; already gauging every face in the crowd.

The two artists met at SXSW back in 2018: "We saw each other and it was just immediate," he said with a snap of his fingers.

Shortly after, he opened for a few shows on her 2019 "When We All Fall Asleep" tour. She even joked on her Beats 1 radio show that she's "in love with him," while her brother Finneas praised Duckwrth as a "sweet, talented dude."

"It's not just knowing Billie. It's knowing Billie's family," Duckwrth explained. "That's what's really cool about her. I get really giddy talking about it, because there's so much love in their family and they show us so much love. It's really tight. But my connection with her and her family has grown as the years have gone on."

For his second round in front of Eilish's loyal audience, Duckwrth is eager to revive "Kiss U Right Now," the breakout hit from "SuperGood" that he performed on many stages before it was officially released.

"Every time we did it, it would be like, 'Ooh!' It would just always be an uproar and then people started asking for it on Twitter," he said. "A lot of Billie's fans were asking for that song. So, I know when we do it, it's going to go up, for sure."

In fact, Duckwrth cited "Kiss U Right Now" as the consistent highlight of his shows.

"I love the challenge of trying to find something that crosses over and it has a bit of user-friendliness," Duckwrth told me. "That's not to say that I'm censored in any way, but I like music that spans beyond a certain niche. 'Kiss U Right Now,' anyone can relate to that."

"It doesn't even have to be sexual. You kiss your grandma, you know what I'm saying?" he added, that playful grin creeping back. "It's a bold statement, a statement of love: 'I think I want to kiss you right here in front of everybody, right now.'"

It makes sense that a bold statement of love would resonate with people now more than ever. To hold someone close, to embrace without fear, has never felt more vulnerable, or more needed.

Duckwrth never revealed what happened to the star of his "SG8*" film, after a mysterious girl arrives to the party and pulls him away from the outskirts. But it's not hard to imagine what he had in mind.