Frannk Whitte was fifteen when he went through his first breakup, and not long after, he wrote and recorded a song for the first time. What he did next is the part that stuck. He sent it to a few friends and didn’t tell them who was singing. They loved it. “That was the moment I knew I had to keep going,” he says.
Nearly a decade later, the São Paulo-born artist, who works between Brazil and Los Angeles, is rolling out his debut album, Who? A new track arrives every couple of weeks, and the full record is due by mid-November. His most recent release, “Taste,” came out September 10 and sits alongside “I Can Finally Know,” “Night Shift” and “Grooving Without Moving” on his Spotify.
Music was part of his life long before that first song. Whitte was five when he saw Michael Jackson videos for the first time. “Honestly, he felt like a superhero,” he says. He got the glove and tried to dance like him. Drum lessons followed around age seven or eight, and by thirteen he was making his own beats. He’s spent his whole life around the arts, including acting and directing, but says music has always been the core.
“Even as a kid, I felt different, more sensitive to sound and emotion, and music became my way of translating the world,” he says. “To me, music is the closest thing we have to magic.”
He wants his songs to work as doorways for the people who hear them. Whitte talks about a track taking someone back to a night that mattered, or to a person or version of themselves they hadn’t thought about in a while. “Whether it’s dancing or crying, or just sitting with something real,” he says, “I want that emotional connection to be undeniable.”
The music pulls from alternative R&B, soul and modern pop, with warm textures and an intimate vocal delivery. Whitte doesn’t tie himself to a single genre. He says the songs come straight from wherever he is emotionally and personally when he makes them. “I’m not chasing a label or a category,” he says. “I’m chasing honesty.”
For the past three years, Whitte has been mentored by producer and songwriter Cory Rooney, and Who? is the first album to come out of that time. For now, he wants fans to sit with it and digest it. Once it’s fully out, he’s planning one or two special nights in São Paulo.
The title carries some of that first story with it. At fifteen, Whitte kept his name off his first song and let his friends judge it without knowing who made it. Nearly ten years on, his debut is called Who?, and he means it as both his introduction and his answer to that question.
Follow Frannk Whitte on Instagram and TikTok, and stream his music on Spotify.
