{"id":305812,"date":"2026-02-19T09:01:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T09:01:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/305812\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T09:01:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T09:01:07","slug":"brent-faiyaz-icon-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/305812\/","title":{"rendered":"Brent Faiyaz : Icon Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

No more fucking models in the back of Uber XLs. No more brooding alone at house parties. No more ditching women in random cities on a whim. No more sending girlfriends to therapy by labeling himself a \u201cwalking erection\u201d or basking in his hedonism with rhetorical questions like, \u201cI like to run the streets \u2019til it\u2019s dark out and then come home and blow your back out\/I hope that\u2019s OK?\u201d After years of cold-hearted, gothic mood pieces that cribbed from The-Dream<\/a>\u2019s writerly breakup ballads and Jodeci<\/a>\u2019s sex-crazed fantasies, Brent Faiyaz<\/a> is leaving all of that baggage in the past. Icon is his gentle and mature pivot into the grown folks R&B canon.<\/p>\n

The Oh shit, I\u2019m pushing (or just hit) 30 album is a rite of passage for the R&B playboy. What comes to mind: the Don Draper-like commitment crisis of Dwele\u2019s 2008 project Sketches of a Man; Life Goes On, Donell Jones\u2019 regret-fueled 2000s time capsule, looking back at all the games he played throughout his 20s. But Faiyaz\u2019s emotional growth on Icon\u2014stamped with a Raphael Saadiq<\/a> executive producer credit that seems like it\u2019s just for show\u2014isn\u2019t nuanced enough. The talk of settling down and staying in the crib feels like moodboard fodder, without any of the scraps of conversation and vivid stories that give a fly-on-the-wall view of actual personal relationships.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

The problem is that his writing about being ready for love is not nearly as candid as his writing about running away from it. Fuck the World<\/a> and Wasteland<\/a> are full of thorny self-observations and critiques (\u201cWho can I love when they tell me I can\u2019t love myself?\/How in the hell could I possibly love someone else?\u201d) that explain his descent into clubrat deviance. On Icon, I don\u2019t get a sense for why, all of a sudden, Brent is ready to take that next life step. For instance, on \u201cwrong faces.,\u201d he\u2019s telling this girl to leave the streets and come home to him, but he doesn\u2019t explain to her (or us!) what exactly has changed about his mindset. Likewise, the lyrics of the almost-engagement anthem \u201cstrangers.\u201d has a good amount of melodrama (\u201cBaby, you were supposed to change your last name\/And then it came all crashing down\u201d), yet his chronicles of what went wrong are vague and one-sided: He did everything he could; she messed it up. I\u2019ve been listening to him be a demon for five projects straight and now I\u2019m supposed to believe he\u2019s a hopeless romantic just because he says so?<\/p>\n

Brent\u2019s uncharacteristically shallow pen leaves a lot of the emotional heavy lifting to the vocals. That probably should be a disaster, considering he\u2019s never been a strong singer, but there\u2019s some life to his pitch-shifted riffs on \u201980s and \u201990s male R&B melodies. He doesn\u2019t have the church choir technicality to pull off the Jodeci-style stacked vocals of \u201cworld is yours.,\u201d but it\u2019s fun to hear him try with helium-tinged chirps. The fat snares and cloudy soul of \u201cpure fantasy.\u201d have the weightless bounce of a new jack swing slow jam. The croons on \u201cother side.\u201d might have had a similar effect, if it wasn\u2019t shameless Benny Blanco<\/a> co-produced funkless funk chasing that The Weeknd<\/a> bag. On \u201chave to.,\u201d his producer team (including longtime collaborator Dpat) laces him with a thunderous Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis bassline and sway to go with his computerized falsetto. There\u2019s a little bit of welcome uneasiness when he lilts, \u201cI\u2019m in a race with time to get where I belong,\u201d like the pressure to get his shit together is weighing on him\u2014an evolution from the nothing-matters dicking around of lines like Wasteland\u2019s \u201cWe both still young, so what\u2019s the rush?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201chave to.\u201d teases the feeling of walls closing in on him, but Faiyaz fully explores that state on \u201cbutterflies,\u201d one of his best songs to date. Dreamy, stripped-down production makes it seem like he\u2019s walking down the wedding aisle in slow motion with no idea what he\u2019s going to do. He toggles between excitement and tenderness and doubt and uncertainty, from the smoothly sung opening line, \u201cMaybe it\u2019s a little bit rushed, but I\u2019m falling in love.\u201d Meanwhile, pitched-down vocal echoes sweep into the hook, intensifying the anxiety that\u2019s creeping in. By the time he chooses her and the mood turns celebratory, with swelling, crushed-up vocals that turn him into a one-man Mint Condition, the euphoria still has a hint of nerves. It\u2019s so raw. It\u2019s the exact sort of emotional dilemma that humanized his womanizer antics. It\u2019s one of the few times on Icon where he makes love feel like more than a catalyst for a rebrand\u2014the rare moment he brings the playful specificity and honesty of his player music to the frightening thrill of commitment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No more fucking models in the back of Uber XLs. No more brooding alone at house parties. No…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":305813,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[692,93,61,60,278,514],"class_list":["post-305812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-music","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=305812"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/305812\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/305813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=305812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=305812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=305812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}