Upstairs, the New Orleans native is giving a short interview to promote his debut album, Painted, followed by a five-song acoustic performance. For the intimate group of fans gathered in New York’s YouTube Space, it’s a small window into the R&B singer’s life, details of which are largely absent from his music. Songwriting is Daye's superpower, channeling his deepest anxieties and yearnings over vibrant horns and booming basslines that evoke Chaka Khan and Rufus and The Stylistics. When he sings, he seems to lock eyes with everyone in the crowd, but the man center stage right now is very guarded.

On a Thursday evening in May, an unusually long line snakes through the middle of Manhattan's Chelsea Market. The group grows, and soon it's clear that the crowd of roughly 60 people isn’t waiting for the Ninth Street Espresso shop. Bystanders want to know: "What are you standing in line for?" A young woman replies: "Lucky Daye."

Lucky Daye, born David Brown, spent the first eight years of his life as a member of a now-defunct Christian church that imposed strict rules governing how he was allowed to live his life. Popular music, among other things, was considered a sin, and the boy with the golden voice was consigned only to church hymns and nursery rhymes. Nearly two decades later, what was once forbidden is now the fruit of his labor. Lucky Daye's life was never exceptionally easy, but as he stands on stage singing pieces of the album, for the first time it seems to be going just as planned.

The singer is one of the most exciting voices in the contemporary R&B revival. Last November, he released "Roll Some Mo," a smoky love song detailing how he escapes life's sobering realities with his partner and a blunt, which he says was inspired by the hi-hats and kick drums of Bill Withers' "Use Me." It has spent an impressive 18 weeks in the top ten of Billboard's Adult R&B chart —_and _I and II, the two colorful EPs he's released in the past six months, have secured him over a million monthly listeners on Spotify . With his debut album, Painted, out this month on Keep Cool and RCA Records, he seems poised to hit critical mass—though in some ways, his surprise at this turn of events is understandable.

"The only time I'm happy is when I'm onstage," he tells the host. He seems a bit nervous, at one point revealing he didn't believe his team when they told him about the line winding around the coffee shop. During the performance, he blushes, seemingly disoriented by the fact that the room knows his songs word for word.

"I still feel like I'm behind—that's why my playlist be so random," he tells me. The singer, who considers himself "infinite" (but who the Internet suggests is 33 years old), sprawls out on a couch wearing a shirt that reads "Miracle"; he kicks off exactly one shoe, like he's ready to get comfortable but not too comfortable. Now that he has access to every artist at his fingertips, he follows up the pulsing percussion of Curtis Mayfield's "Pusherman," with the Texas twang of Lil' Troy's "Wanna Be a Baller,” and NYSNC's pubescent pop anthem "Bye Bye Bye." Daye's choice in music is reminiscent of his own journey: It wanders.

At an April photoshoot in a small Ridgewood apartment, Daye is standing by a kitchen table, combing through his music library. He's not someone you want in control of the aux: Songs don't play in full when he's in charge, unless it's an artist whose discography he's trying to learn.

Daye said that several members of his family, both immediate and extended, were members of a Christian church his parents joined before he was born. (VICE agreed not to identify the church, now defunct, at Daye's request). Some of the singer’s earliest memories include attending religious protests led by the organization's pastor. "I don't know what we were protesting for, I just know whenever this guy didn't like something we definitely loaded up and protested whatever we were protesting," he tells me, recalling the boycotts that stick out in his memory. Members, he says, were discouraged from seeking influences outside the church, which banned secular material altogether.

The Seventh Ward, where he lived in elementary and middle school, is what he considers home. "That's where I got into all the trouble," he says with a smirk as mischievous as the neighborhood's "Seventh Ward hardhead" nickname. Details of the city before Hurricane Katrina, which devastated the city when he was a teen, haven't faded. He still recalls the aunt who smelled of cigarettes, and the stray dog, Rocket, he adopted in sixth grade. At a glance, these details may seem insignificant, but they’re the handful of childhood memories that bring with them a semblance of normalcy. It wasn't until he was older that he realized his childhood wasn't so conventional.

Growing up, Daye moved around New Orleans often, learning street names based on the locations of his extended family. There was Pacific Street, where he was born, and his grandmother's house in Harvey's West Bank area, where he lived sporadically when his mom needed an extra hand with him and his four brothers. "My mama moved like seven times," he says of his childhood.

"I don't know exactly what they had going on," he tells me. "I just know there was a room that I hated that they put us in. If we talked, we would get beat. If we didn't eat certain food or complained—it was always some petty stuff, like if you didn't eat all of your food, you would get beat."

"None of it was explained," he tells me. "Don't listen to music. Don't watch TV. The drums is a sin. You telling me if I play instruments, I'm going to burn forever? It was full of fear." According to Daye, children who defied the church's rules, like back-talking or not finishing food, were beaten.

After his mother left the organization, she explored other spiritual avenues. "I feel like she was looking for something," he tells me. "She had us in a bunch of different organizations trying to find what she calls a 'home.' We just went with her." Looking back at his non-traditional upbringing, Daye has complicated feelings about religion ("It's funny how people can use religion to do what they want to do," he says), though he credits these early experiences with teaching him how to be resourceful. "The only thing I did love about [the organization] was learning how to make music from nothing," he says. "I didn't need a beat, a guitar, or anything."

His father, whose love of The Gap Band Daye says sparked his own affinity for music, eventually left the church. A few years later, his mother left too. "The only reason we got out was because the pastor dude… He put me on his lap or whatever, and was telling me when my dad dies, he was going to bring me to the park," he tells me. "I didn't know what that meant, but I was excited." When the singer was older, he says, his mother told him the pastor's invitation to the park is what convinced her to depart from the church. "She explained the 'take me to the park' situation, and I was like, 'That's crazy,'" he says. (The pastor, now deceased, later pleaded “no contest” to molestation charges after being accused by multiple children.)

Daye never quite fit in with his peers. Cafeteria table conversations at school felt foreign to him. Although he'd left the organization when he was eight, it would be almost five years until his mother allowed him to watch television. In the ninth grade, he started using his voice for pocket money, singing to girls at school in exchange for the cost of his cafeteria lunch. "I'd sing their name, and my homie would charge 50 cents," he says. "I'd give him a nickel or just buy both of our fries. I didn't think my voice was nothing special; I just knew I could eat from it, so I started using it as a tool." (He even appeared on season four of American Idol in 2005 , singing a spirited rendition of "All is Fair in Love," among other songs.)

The singer's voice became his refuge, until a stint singing in the choir at his uncle's church became exhausting, and he began to question if he wanted to continue. "They'd always be like, 'When you get to heaven, you're going to sing and praise forever,'" he recalls of the speeches from his family. "I remember telling my mama, ‘I don't think I want to go to heaven,’" he continues, laughing at his younger self. "Forever is a long time. I sing now. I don't want to do this after I die too."

Tyler, Texas, where his family moved after Hurricane Katrina, was a new beginning of sorts. Daye, his grandmother, mother, two uncles, and two of his brothers migrated the 400 miles together, only to separate when they arrived. His brothers made lives for themselves in neighboring cities, and Daye prepared for a life on his own. Before relocating, he’d started reconsidering his relationship to Christianity, and says his relationship with his family had become strained as a result.

"I went [to church] and said, 'I know I'm supposed to sing, but God is telling me that this is not what I'm supposed to be doing," he says. Religion had once held him captive, but now he was using the higher power he believed in to set himself free. "I left and never went back to [that] church," he says. "They never talked to me again. My grandma, my mama, my uncle—none of them. Nobody talked to me. Nobody supported me and at that moment, I realized it was just me."

"It got to a point where I ran out of friends, money, and hope," Daye says of his lowest points. "Ever since I was a kid, people have always said, 'You've got a gift.' I realized maybe music ain't for me, and it hurt because I swore this is my thing. This is all I've got."

The singer relocated to Atlanta, looking to find his footing as a solo artist under his given name, David Brown. He landed a songwriting gig with fellow New Orleans native August Alsina, before eventually making the 36-hour drive from Atlanta to Los Angeles, looking for new opportunities. "I came to LA and I realized I didn't know shit," he recalls. "There were a lot of deals I was in that I didn't know I was in that I had to get out of. I was sitting in lobbies like I was Ice Cube and shit, thinking, 'Somebody gon' talk to me!'" he jokes. "I'm going through it, and I'm realizing it's just a bunch of people listening to a bunch of people. Nobody wants to hear me say, 'I'm tight'; they want to hear somebody else say it." Eventually, he started wondering if he was going to be able to make it work."It got to a point where I ran out of friends, money, and hope," he says. "Ever since I was a kid, people have always said, 'You've got a gift.' I realized maybe music ain't for me, and it hurt because I swore this is my thing. This is all I've got."