Brent Faiyaz looks slightly different these days. In December, months after silently scrapping the rollout of a highly anticipated third album, the elusive R&B singer shared two rare photos of himself on social media: not album announcements, but selfies. Faiyaz had traded his signature fro for a fade, with newly muscular biceps—sending thousands of his yearning fans into a frenzy.

“Buddy put down the microphone and picked up a dumbbell,” one Instagram user commented. “Glad you’re in the gym and all, but drop that album,” another wrote.

Faiyaz might have anticipated that his cryptic posts would cause an outcry. Since garnering mainstream attention with his indelible verse on GoldLink’s Grammy-nominated hit “Crew” in 2016, the Maryland native has accrued an international fanbase and dropped a number of independent projects and albums to widespread acclaim, including 2020’s Fuck The World, 2022’s album full of blockbuster collaborations, WASTELAND, and 2023’s Larger Than Life. It had been about two years since his last release—fans were, understandably, antsy for more.

Truthfully, Faiyaz just wanted to flaunt his fresh cut. “Man, I ain’t know it was gonna do all of that…It wasn’t deep,” he admits via Zoom while in New York City a few days after the photos were posted. Faiyaz’s reasoning belies a deeper truth—the photos signaled a transformative journey for the 30-year-old, even if shared inadvertently. Put more plainly: Brent Faiyaz is fully locked in. With himself, his purpose, and his new music. The commitment is his newfound source of inspiration.

“This is probably the most disciplined I’ve ever been in my life, personally and creatively,” he says of his new era. “I wanted this album to promote love and encapsulate beauty and everything that comes with it, and I wasn’t letting that shit slide until we accomplished it.”

ICON, the aforementioned album pushed back a couple of months, releases this February, and is executive produced by Raphael Saadiq. Previously slated to drop last September, Faiyaz informed his team of the decision to axe the original project the day before its anticipated release. The project was three years in the making, and Faiyaz didn’t feel that the album was complete, thematically and sonically. If he’d gone against his intuition and released ICON on its scheduled date, he’d be “frustrated forever.”

“When it’s something that you put your heart and your soul into, and you put your time into it—I wrote every single lyric on that motherfucker—I’m not about to let something hit people that wasn’t a true representation of me or what I’m trying to promote, or the vision that I want to get across,” he affirms. “If that falls short even a little bit, then I didn’t do my job.”

In turn, Faiyaz, a true perfectionist, adopted a meticulous practice for refining the music, a process he says “whipped [his] ass.” That included longer studio sessions, rewriting songs multiple times, listening to mixes on different devices and in different locations (from the phone to the car, to the house speaker), and enhancing video treatments.

The album’s lead single, “have to.,” is drenched in crisp 80s synths that—when paired with Faiyaz’s fuzzy falsetto—sound like a dreamy, exhilarating relationship that sweeps you off your feet. Previously, Faiyaz’s musings on love centered the lament of being too busy to fully enjoy it. But on “have to.” hectic work schedules and whirlwind romance can coexist.

“I think people look at missing somebody like it’s a bad thing. But I think missing [someone] builds it up and creates some urgency, so that when you finally do get to reach who it is that you’ve been waiting on, it’s going to be sweeter than ever,” he says.

Other songs on ICON embrace that intimacy, elaborating the magnetic 80s vibe set in the lead single. The time period was a golden age for R&B music—blending soul, funk and soft rock into timeless soundscapes that made desire (and unabashedly craving it) feel like a rewarding, competitive sport—see: Sade’s “The Sweetest Taboo,” Michael Jackson’s “Human Nature” or Anita Baker’s “Been so Long.”

Faiyaz prioritizes that same unencumbered yearning on “pure fantasy.,” a dazzling four-minute escapade into the height of amorous satisfaction. On “world is yours.” Faiyaz’s vocals often transform into a jazzy soprano so sweet and tender—punctuating the pleasure implied in the song title.

“[ICON] is more about the sacrifice and unconditional love versus the performative like, ‘Baby, I love you’ shit,” Faiyaz shares. “An icon, by definition, is a person, thing or symbol that’s widely admired and represents an idea or a concept, somebody worthy of veneration. This is just the idea that the person that you decide to spend your life with or the person that you love unconditionally is an icon to you.”

Creating the new music required an intense shedding of old habits, including being more purposeful with his process. “For the longest time, when I made music, it always came real easy,” said Faiyaz, who turned 30 last September (the same day ICON was supposed to drop). “It wasn’t really no real effort. I was just vibing, and I cooked up the next thing to make a hit. I started realizing later on what comes with that, though. I got certain records I wrote when I was 23 and people will associate my entire personality with just the way I felt when I was vibing on the songs that I made when I was 23. Naturally, your perspective at 23 ain’t gonna be the same as it is at 30.”

It is the case that his oeuvre traces the stages of his maturation—2020’s Fuck The World fully caressed the singer’s hedonistic tendencies, building the perception of a sound made by a guy whom you wouldn’t want your sister to date. In 2022, Faiyaz’s career hit a stride with WASTELAND, featuring Drake, Alicia Keys, and Tyler, the Creator, an album that cultivated a cinematic allure, with Faiyaz portraying a protagonist who wasn’t quite ready to confront his vices.

WASTELAND debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200, Faiyaz’s highest-charting album. The success yielded a partnership with UnitedMasters, from which Faiyaz formed his own creative agency and label ISO [In Search Of] Supremacy in 2023. That same year, he dropped his Larger Than Life mixtape and embarked on his first world tour.

But it was along that peak where he received a shocking revelation: after touring and dealing with incessant coughing, a doctor informed him that he had asthma, bronchitis, and strep throat last year.

The news, which also contributed to the delay of ICON, was a wake-up call for Faiyaz.

“You think you’re indestructible. A lot of Black men, we don’t like to go to a doctor. We often think we are good, everything is whatever. Then, you fuck around and you coughing, and you don’t know why. Then, you go to the doctor, and you find out all this extra shit. It’s just kind of like, ‘Alright, let me start being on top of my life.’”

Now, Faiyaz’s healthier lifestyle includes journaling, working out every day (“It’s not optional,” he says of hitting the gym, which explains his new physique) and partying less. He spends more time with his family and engages in hobbies like watching movies (any Bruce Willis film offers inspiration) and driving around in his cars (a Strosek Porsche, McLaren 600LT).

“You come into a position in your 20s where everything is abundant. Everybody just throws everything at you, and everybody wants to stand next to you, and everybody wants to give you things, and people give you crazy amounts of money to perform and scream your name and all these things. Nobody ever really tells you ‘No,’ so you kind of gotta take it upon yourself to do that.”

Now splitting his time between New York City, Los Angeles, and Miami, Faiyaz is fully in his “introverted life,” which comes in handy during the winter months. He’s not active at all on social media, and he doesn’t even own a laptop (something he hasn’t had in 10 years because he “loses a lot of shit”). Ideally, he’d move to “the middle of nowhere and just drive my cars.” He’d also like to direct an action film, as he plans to explore filmmaking sooner than later.

It is this need for isolation and privacy that now catalyzes Faiyaz’s creativity—the artist, nearly a decade into his career, doesn’t need external validation for his creative work. It’s that turn inward from a chaotic world, the clear separation between his work life and personal life, that motivates him.

“I’d rather just drop the music and be active when there’s some work that’s coming out versus all the extra shit of who you dating? Are you in a relationship? Are you with this person? Like, whose business is that?”

Photographed by Ian Buosi

Styled by Jay Hines 

Written by DeAsia Paige

Grooming: Taria Groce

Barber: Chris Dupree

Flaunt Film: Yong W Kim

Art Direction & Co-Production: Osal Studio

Styling Assistants: Michael Washington and Amiah Joy