Durand Bernarr released the official video for "Waiting" on Friday (Sept 25), almost five months after his collaboration with Big Sean first surfaced on his May album, BERNARR. The clip takes the song outdoors to a daytime party, where the two move through a crowd dressed in early-2000s fits while spray-painted backdrops stand in for a set. Most of the clip keeps the camera loose among partygoers, catching Bernarr and Sean as guests in the crowd between performance shots.

The visual arrives in the biggest year of the Cleveland singer's career. In February, he won Best Progressive R&B Album at the 68th Grammy Awards for BLOOM, a year after he was nominated in the same category for En Route. His 45-second acceptance speech became one of the most shared moments of the night, after he hurried to the stage in a Luar mule and read his remarks off his publicist's phone.

That win capped a long road through other people's records. Bernarr toured with Earth, Wind & Fire at 16 and began building an audience with YouTube covers in 2008. Erykah Badu found him on Twitter in 2011 through an EP of her songs, and he has sung background for her for years since. He finished as runner-up on BET's The Next Big Thing in 2019 and has worked alongside Anderson .Paak, Kaytranada and The Internet, all while releasing his own albums as an independent artist.

BERNARR. arrived May 1 through DSING Records and Create Music Group, 17 tracks named for his father, an audio engineer whose credits include Jay-Z, Beyoncé and Rihanna. The production roster reaches back to Raphael Saadiq, Bryan-Michael Cox, Johntá Austin and Troy Taylor. On the guest list, R&B voices like BJ The Chicago Kid, Khalid and Sevyn Streeter share space with rappers Vic Mensa and Big Sean.

"Waiting" sits between "Effort." and "Wild Ride," the James Fauntleroy feature Bernarr described in April as a song "about being ready when the moment finds you." The record is built on Bernarr's hook, "I'll be waiting for you," with Sean arriving as the album's lone Detroit voice.

His name on the credits points the song toward listeners who may have skipped past progressive R&B entirely. Sean has spent close to two decades moving between rap records and R&B features, from his early G.O.O.D. Music singles to "GO HIGHER." That history gives Bernarr, whose Grammy came in an R&B category, a direct line to rap listeners.

For anyone who knows Bernarr mostly through the BLOOM speech or his Badu credits, the setting does real work. It puts a Grammy-winning vocalist in the middle of a party and hands his song to a crowd that is dancing to it.

The release also comes during a long stretch on the road with Kehlani. The run played Viejas Arena in San Diego on Sept 23 and the Intuit Dome in Inglewood the following night, two days before the video went live. Its summer leg stopped at Michigan Lottery Amphitheatre in Sterling Heights, outside Detroit, on Aug 13, then reached Blossom Music Center in Cuyahoga Falls, south of Bernarr's hometown, the next evening. The next dates on his tour page are a two-night stand at Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountain View, Calif., on Oct 3 and 4.

Between shows he has kept adding to his guest work, turning up recently in a Dawn Richard video. Billboard also reported that a deluxe edition of BLOOM is in development, alongside upcoming collaborations with Vic Mensa, Richard and Sebastian Mikael.

Watch the official video for "Waiting" below, and stream the song on Spotify, Apple Music and SoundCloud.