Brent Faiyaz never stays in one place for long. One second, you’ll find him enjoying fine wine on a balcony overlooking Los Angeles. The next, he’ll be greeting crazed fans on the claustrophobically narrow streets of London. It’s always impossible to predict where you’ll see him next, but wherever he is, he always shows up as himself.
This summer, billboards in major cities across the country displayed the following cryptic phrase: “I would like to apologize in advance for the person I’m gonna become once this album drops.”
The billboards belonged to 26-year-old singer-songwriter Brent Faiyaz; the album in question was “Wasteland,” a cautionary, R&B-trap opera deriding fame in a time of social and political upheaval. Today, “Wasteland” debuted on the Billboard 200 at No. 2, just behind global megastar Bad Bunny.
“Fuck The World came out at the same time as [COVID],” he points out. “It’s like, I dropped that shit and everything stopped, so I couldn’t really shoot video or do shows. We had a whole tour planned and we had to cancel it. I was really living and experiencing all of the hype of that project on my own. I was making more money than I ever fuckin’ made, but it was all around the same time COVID happened and George Floyd got killed, so it was just a weird time.”
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Faiyaz pauses for a second to look out of the window again, taking in the full scope of his universe. I witness a brief moment of contemplation, before he digs through clothes for the shoot and gets back to his fast-paced life. In a way, Wasteland offers a similar glimpse into Faiyaz’s ever-changing world, and I wonder how often he gets to slow down and ponder that. But before I can ask, he’s on the move again. There’s still more places to be.
