Brent Faiyaz “F*ck The World” Album Review
On February 7th, 2020, R&B singer Brent Faiyaz released his sophomore album entitled “F*ck The World”. This project comes 3 years after his debut album, “Sonder Son” which served as a spin-off project and solo career launch following the release of “Into”, an album by the band, Sonder for which Faiyaz provides lead vocals.
“F*ck The World” has a total of 10 tracks, two of which were released in 2019 as singles including the title track and “Rehab (Winter in Paris)”. This project has no features and unlike the first only contains one monologue where the first album has outro soundbites to almost every track of conversations between Faiyaz and his friends. This album is split into three pools of subject matters: relationship drama, self-reflection and the pursuit of money and success. It listens like a stream of consciousness and features cult classic jazz influenced production and a hypnotizing delivery.
Track 1 starts the project off with an existential tone in “Skyline”. This song touches on the big questions of the meaning of life as Faiyaz repeatedly asks the question “Do you know what makes the world go round.” Faiyaz sets the rest of the project up by emphasizing that this world is a series of cause and effect where every action has an equal and opposite affect on others around us.
The second track, “Clouded” introduces the self-reflection theme as Faiyaz reveals insecurities about being judged and acclimating to the R&B industry. This song provides quite a bit of transparency and gives the listener a glimpse into his state of mind as he expresses his doubts about his career impact, resonation, longevity and the mental and emotional price to be paid to have all of those things. Faiyaz gets raw about his emotional state introducing a dark tone saying “I feel like dying every season” showing the detriment that fame and anxiety has had on him.
Track three, “Been A Way”, brings into focus the relationship drama piece of this project as he pleads with an un-named lover to “stick around” and “be there” while he is trying to climb the ladder of success in his career. Faiyaz reveals how he is uncertain about the state of their relationship and pleads to know where they stand. This song features similar elements to late singer, Aaliyah’s “One In A Million” bringing a sultry quality to the track while also bringing to the forefront the romantic side of Faiyaz that he struggles between reaching for and pushing away altogether.
Track four is the namesake of the project, “F*ck The World” and shows a shift between the vulnerability in track three to a more guarded, closed and defensive side of Faiyaz’s psyche in the project. This track solidifies the pessimistic tone set by the title of the album and the first song through the objectification of the world and making it subject to his way. This tracked is peppered with arrogance as Faiyaz bolsters his self image with a strong assertion of his masculinity and sexuality. The end of the track introduces the first and only monologue of the project where Faiyaz directly addresses the dark tone of this song, this project and his music in general.
“you know it’s deeper than that it’s like a certain way of looking at life and looking at the world. I think that some of the qualities that make up people that relate to my music is like a empathetic narcissism or attention to detail, an overindulgent personality when it comes to sex and drugs..If you don’t get it, you don’t get it but if you get it, it’s because you live it”
Faiyaz quickly shifts to a stream of consciousness mode in track five, “Let Me Know” where he asks the question “who can I love when they tell me I can’t love myself?” repeatedly. This serves as almost a direct address of society as he questions why there is evil in the world when it is clear that love is the answer to all pain.
Faiyaz breaks the fourth wall in “Let Me Know” as he addresses the listener to “hold on” to hope in the world and believe in themselves despite voices that encourage otherwise. This is a change of pace from the rest of the album as the other songs come across as more of a vocalized internal monologue where this is the first time the listener is directly included in his dialogue. He reiterates in the background that this is a song for “people like him” and seems to encourage himself just as much as he encourages his fans to not believe what society pushes and reminds them that they are “stars.”
Track seven, “Rehab (Winter In Paris)” and track eight, “Bluffin” revisits the themes of relationship dramas and questioning where he and his lover stands amid their issues. These songs touch on domestic troubles and drug use that Faiyaz talked about in his monologue a few tracks before.
Faiyaz rounds out the album coming full circle in track 10, “Make it out” which re-visits the depressive state of mind he introduces in “Clouded” as he expresses how he has “been down” and hopes to “Make it out” as the title suggests. This outro is short and open ended. Faiyaz doesn’t elaborate on his state of mind and leaves the door open making for a yet-to-be determined type of conclusion in the album’s storyline.
The Verdict
Faiyaz offers up a strong sophomore album that sounds like a page from a personal journal of anxieties, affirmations, and existential skepticism. Faiyaz guts himself in every track offering up a high level of vulnerability when it comes to his thoughts on love, the world and getting to the next level in life and career. The album takes the listener on a rollercoaster ride of the lows with a brief reminder to hold on to the highs in the midst of them all.
Overall this was a solid project sonically but the focus is not so much on the production as it is on the lyrics though both prove to be solid and beautiful.
Though this was pleasing both production and message wise there was a bit of an imbalance as most of the songs had a dark undercurrent and did not leave the audience on a positive high note.
Depending on the angle a person is looking at this project it can be perceived as brilliant or falling short. On one hand, this was not a warm and fuzzy album that is often characteristic of R&B music. The subject matter is mature and provides an existential realism we don’t see in mainstream R&B.
On the other hand, the entire message of the album was not meant to be agreeable or palatable to the listeners or the world as the title suggests. In actuality, the perceived goal was to illustrate what societal pressures, anxiety, and relationship-related turmoil can do to the individuals subjected to their pressures. In light of this interpretation, “F*ck The World” does its job in defying expectations to reveal one’s truth for the sake of doing so and not for approval. This project gets a solid 8 out of 10 for that alone.
Photo Source: Hypebeast
