BRENT FAIYAZ: ON SUPERSTAR STATUS 

Written by Samantha Fong

When a Brent Faiyaz song is playing on the AUX, there’s no question that it’s him. Smooth and remarkably soulful, Brent Faiyaz merits a new kind of R&B sound, with his signature acapella notes an unmistakable sign that he’s the person on the mic. Also paired with heavy basslines and snappy one-liners, each Faiyaz track comes together in a suave trifecta of vocals, instrumentals, and witty lyricism. The thousands of TikTok sound bites in his name only further prove that his lyrics stick with us, which are intoxicating and introspective all the same.

Brent Faiyaz is an artist who cuts right to the chase when he hops on a track. Instead of shaping his voice around the instrumentals he takes the opposite approach, exchanging structure for fluidity and keeping us on our toes for every second of the track. Faiyaz’s sporadic vocal runs take center stage as he leads us to new emotional heights, generating excitement about his unpredictability and passion for his relatability. Any first listeners would be simultaneously surprised and enthused by his unconventional approach to production.

Moreover, the consistency in his sound over time, which is far from overproduced, is almost as if he’s saying that though his music may evolve it will never fundamentally change. Even with his increasing level of fame, Faiyaz has no intention of adapting to please the masses. Instead, Faiyaz is honest about the way fame has warped his perspective on life, touching on the difficulty of trusting in others as a celebrity in his latest album “Wasteland”. If there’s one takeaway from listening to this latest release, it’s that superstar status, shiny and glamorous as it may seem, comes with its vices too, and these downsides are not to be ignored.

Getting his musical start on Soundcloud at age 16, music was for Brent Faiyaz what high school drama was for us–he just couldn’t get enough of it. At home, he would make his own beats, freestyle rap over them, and then hand his self-made CDs out to friends at school. He realized that he had star potential when he got compliments on his tracks, despite a lack of support from his parents who saw Faiyaz’s musical endeavors as detracting from his academic success. 

Still, Faiyaz was persistent about his love for singing, and instead of focusing on graduating high school, he’d spend his time reaching out to industry figures – managers, agencies, and journalists – about giving him a chance to show what he could achieve as an up-and-coming artist. After finally getting recognition from talent manager Ty Baisden in 2016 for his earlier published 2014 Soundcloud single “Natural Release”, they together formed the Lost Kids record label, under which Faiyaz would release the rest of his current discography. In 2016, Faiyaz moved from Maryland to Los Angeles to pursue music full-time. 

Now having a team to represent him, Brent Faiyaz carefully crafted his brand, taking his given middle name “Brent” and conjoining it with the moniker “Faiyaz”, which translates to “artistic” in Arabic, to complete his industry persona. In late 2016, under Lost Kids LLC, Brent Faiyaz released his very first EP “A.M. Paradox”, which not only got positive coverage by reporters, but it also landed him on the radar of established rapper Goldlink. Their subsequent collaboration on the single “Crew” was a hit garnering over 400 million streams on Spotify. The spotlight helped jumpstart Faiyaz’s career and is to date one of his most celebrated collaborations. 

Yet Faiyaz had the priority of establishing himself as an independent artist first, and used the next few years to do exactly that with his albums “Sonder Son” and “F**k the World”. In this collection of records, we get the exclusive on what’s going through his mind as he navigates relationships through the lens of fame, which is that trust is hard to get and even harder to give, especially when you never know if the other person will be there for you when the storm subsides. 

Most importantly, Faiyaz pulls this general theme from a very personal place. In his 2017 song “Home” for example, he talks about avoiding coming home for fear of judgment from his parents, with lyrics like “Not that I'm hiding/It's just safer being silent these days” evoking in the listener the desperation of what it’s like to want to vent but not being able to. In this generation of chronic oversharers, this resonates all the more as each one of us is left to fight relentlessly to make ourselves heard. This theme later reappears in Faiyaz’s 2018 track “Trust”, where he confides to an imagined partner in a moody tone, “You told me I could trust you/Don’t lie/I could really use it”. In an ideal world, trust would be a given between everyone – but like any good pessimist, Faiyaz warns us against our own naivete, serving as the grounding voice that we need in order to protect ourselves against the hurt.

With his third studio album “Wasteland” sporting features from big names like Drake, Tyler the Creator, and Alicia Keys, Brent Faiyaz shows no signs of slowing down. That “Wasteland” made it to the #2 spot on the Billboard 200 only adds to his allure as one of the biggest artists of our generation. As for the future, Faiyaz plans to jump headfirst into projects including showcasing his style in his new 90s-inspired clothing brand, NUWO, and test-driving dance music for example with his latest 2023 Marshmello collab, “Fell in Luv”. As is consistent with his nonchalant demeanor and cool-kid front, Brent Faiyaz is someone who lives his life on the edge, and it’s safe to say that he’s confident he’ll make it out of the storm, so long as he has music as his North Star.