R&B singer/songwriter Maurice Moore, has released his brand new “Destination Unknown” EP. Stream it below and watch the visual for the title track.
“Destination Unknown is a sort of a stream of consciousness moment. This record’s concept was inspired while sitting in the car in my driveway one night, thinking of how our lives are constantly in flux. Life has given both blissful moments and moments where we question whether it’s even worth living.” – Maurice Moore
With a smooth falsetto, nineties bounce, hip-hop cadence, clever ad-libs, and charisma for days. Born in Springfield, IL and raised in Ottawa, Maurice Moore immediately sets the mood by slipping past all boundaries. The Ottawa, Canada singer, songwriter, and producer integrates bright pop appeal and rap-style humor into tight R&B song-craft on his independent 2017 debut, The Amber Room. Flipping the script comes naturally for him as he credits this innate knack for blurring lines to a unique heritage.
“Everything about my life is completely influenced by my background,” he explains. “My dad is from Ohio, and his family is African American with a little bit of Cuban in there. My mom is Native American and Canadian. I never saw lines between anything—especially creatively. Whereas a lot of people grow up with barriers, I was brought into a world that was literally a melting pot. You can hear that I’m open to different styles and cultures in what I do. As a kid, I’d go from Tupac and Chris Brown with my dad to Shania Twain and Michael Jackson with my mom. That’s who I am.”
The artist teamed with popular production duo Film Noir and started uploading tracks to Soundcloud in 2015. Among early uploads, “The Loudest Silence” racked up over 4.3 million Spotify streams, and “C’est la Vie” cracked 1.3 million streams as “LOL.” generated 726K streams and became the basis for Chris Brown’s hit “Liquor.” Beyond show-stopping performances at his 2015 SXSW debut, he made a point to “track down Kehlani” and the two would collaborate on the viral hit “Awesome.” Along the way, he earned the endorsement of tastemakers such as Noisey, Earmilk, The Fader, and more in addition to penning songs for everyone from K-Pop sensation EXO to Justine Skye and Marques Houston. Most importantly, he dug up his own identity during this period.
“I was trying to find myself,” he explains. “I’d given up football, and music was now my job. It was a weird feeling. I went through a bit of a transition to where writing wasn’t just for fun anymore. That affected me. I stumbled upon ‘The Amber Room’ on Google one day. It’s a room made out of gold and diamonds seized by the Nazis in WWII. It just disappeared after the war. Modern day treasure hunters have been looking for it ever since. I perceived it as a metaphor for the treasure hunt of finding myself. It gives me purpose.”
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