Photo Credit: Power 106

Destiny Rogers is here to bless the R&B game with her sweet personality and badass skateboarding passion. Hailing from a small town in Northern California called Lodi, the singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist caught the attention of The Stereotypes, the Grammy-award winning production group who’s worked with everyone from Bruno Mars to Justin Bieber to Ne-Yo to Chris Brown. This year alone, she unleashed her Tomboy EP featuring lead single “Tomboy,” along with a banger titled “Lo Lo” with P-Lo and Guapdad 4000 — a Bay Area collab for the books. Now, she sits with DJ Felli Fel at the station for an intimate conversation about her journey.

Born and raised in the church, Destiny has been surrounded by music her entire life. She explains, “My dad’s a worship leader and he’s also a musician. He plays piano and drums, and he sings. My mom’s a singer too, she sang in the choir. Growing up in church and always being around music, it was all I knew. I was in church every day because they were always there. It was kind of in my blood already, but I never gave it any attention until I was probably 4 or 5. My dad would gift me drum sets for Christmas. When I was a baby, my parents would put out pots and pans around me and give me spoons, I just bang on the pans to get a beat in my head.”

10-year-old Destiny was binge-watching Youtube videos when she discovered an early Justin Bieber playing guitar, which inspired her to pick up her own. Fast forward to age 17, she began posting her own Youtube covers. It was her mashup of Khalid, Drake, and Daniel Ceasar that caught the attention of Jeremy from The Stereotypes. After she saw they did “Somebody To Love” by Justin Bieber, she was sold.

Destiny prides herself in wanting to create her own lane and sound. “Mainly, we’d start with production. They’d all come in the room including myself. We’d make the beat first in the music. We’re like “okay this sounds pretty right.’ Then it was the first time working with songwriters, so songwriters were coming in the room and using their input. It was cool, we were just having ideas bouncing back and forth to each other.”

On her Tomboy EP is the song “Strong Ones,” which is one of her most heartfelt songs. Destiny explains going through one of the hardest times of her life. “It all happened at once. My sister lost her house so she had to move in with me and my mom. my niece was getting bullied in school. My mom almost got diagnosed with cancer. There’s health problems with my mom, my sister financially wasn’t doing well. My mom financially wasn’t doing well, and we just wanted her to be healthy. How are we going to get this money? My job as an aunt, as a sister, and a daughter, is to take care of them.”

After expressing all this to The Stereotypes, barriers were broken down. Watch the rest of the interview above as she talks about buying Pro Tools for the first time, trying to make her dreams come true at 18 while dealing with life obstacles, coming to Power 106 for the first time, and more!