Harv has envisioned this day for years. The producer-songwriter — known for his work with artists like Justin Bieber, Skrillex and Normani — is launching a solo career with his debut single, “Losses,” he exclusively reveals to Billboard.
Due out Friday (Jan. 27) through Range Music Partners, “Losses,” featuring Kyle, is the culmination of a long-held belief and patient pursuit. “You don’t care about the losses / Losses, yeah, the losses / You say you got too many options,” Kyle sings on the ethereal, silky single. And as Kyle dissects a love lost, Harv commands the bass and drums — he has done this forever, long before he became Bieber’s bassist in 2009, but the camera angle has shifted.
“I don’t want to get too far away from letting the world know that I’m actually a musician,” the artist born Bernard Harvey tells Billboard. “I want the 12-year-old kid that wants to play bass to look at ‘Losses’ like, ‘Oh, that’s what I want to do.’”
Growing up in Kansas City, Kansas, Harv relentlessly practiced the bass, cello and piano — fueled at home by his mother, a pianist and minister of music at Corinthian Baptist Church, as well as by “old-school heroes” like Prince and Rick James. Harv vividly recalls attending a Destiny’s Child concert at 15 years old, but not because of Beyoncé. “It’s me and my brother versus 20,000 girls screaming for Destiny’s Child, who are amazing, but me and my brother were locked in on the band,” he recalls. “Every time the bass player did something, I was just like, ‘Whoa.’”
Harv proclaimed at his high school lunch table that he’d one day play in front of 90,000 people, and then slowly stacked his wins, from a music technology scholarship for Alabama State University to his first major placement on Gucci Mane’s “Lemonade” once he’d moved to Atlanta, where he was introduced to Bieber in 2009. Since then, Harv has toured the world several times over with Bieber and We The Band — “If you want to be the best, you gotta put yourself around the best,” he says of his arena-ready bass work — while gradually transitioning to producing and songwriting.
After contributing to a handful of Bieber album tracks, as well as to songs by artists like Omarion and Sevyn Streeter, Harv’s co-production credit on Bieber’s Grammy-nominated No. 1 smash “Peaches,” featuring Daniel Caesar and Giveon, felt like a final puzzle piece in 2021. “I control what I want to do with my music now, as opposed to coming out prematurely and not having the respect or the legs,” he says. “It’s the perfect time right now.”
In early 2022, an unassuming six-hour studio session with Kyle led to “Losses.” That night, Harv played the track for his wife, Felisha, and two months later, he selected it as his debut single. “When you listen to ‘Losses,’ immediately, you think [of] a relationship where you may give more than you’re receiving,” he says. “It’s not reciprocated, and the person doesn’t care about you losing, but it can be anything in life. Musicians go through a lot. We put our all in, and [in] this music business, sometimes it doesn’t give you the same thing that you put into it.”
He plans to take the same organic approach to his solo career moving forward, in order to identify which sessions will generate the best songs without placing unnecessary pressure on results. “You can have a few good songs, but I want to have a long career,” says Harv. “I want to be 50 and have people look at me how they look at Quincy Jones. Like, ‘Oh, he’s one of those guys. He’s not just here for a summer.’ No, I’m here for the long haul.”
