Brent Faiyaz Admits Even He Has A Hard Time Listening To ‘Wasteland’

Brent Faiyaz has admitted that despite having one of the year’s biggest albums in the form of Wasteland, he’s had a hard time listening to it.

Speaking to Variety, the crooner explained his stance oh his sophomore effort. “Oftentimes, records that are real personal will come from a place where I know where it came from and I can pinpoint that to an exact situation that really happened in my life,” he said.

“It can get hard to listen to, and especially hard to perform. Some songs, I’ve been performing, and I’m just like, ‘Man, that’s just a lot; I can’t perform this shit right now.’”

While Brent Faiyaz wouldn’t elaborate on which songs he was referring to, he did speak on how he feels being labeled a “toxic” R&B singer.

“I don’t really think about it, to be honest,” he said. “I don’t like, wake up and go to sleep thinking about the state of R&B. Anything that somebody else is making, that’s on them. Any opinions that somebody got on what I make, that’s just how they perceive it.

He continued: “During the process, I write what I write and make what I make. We have to drop it under some category, so we put it under R&B. I don’t really be thinking about it like that.”

Even though Wasteland was only just released, Faiyaz recently revealed that he’s already hard at work on its follow-up, Make It Out Alive.

“I still have a project I want to put out called Make It Out Alive,” Brent said. “That’s still in the works — it’s just not this one, because I love the title Wasteland and I love what it represents.”

He continued: “I have an idea in my head of what I want Make It Out Alive to be, but all of the songs that I have been making up until this point didn’t fit that title. I wasn’t in the headspace to put that body of work out.”

Wasteland marked Brent Faiyaz’s first full-length release since 2017’s Sonder Son, and the 19-track album features appearances from Drake, Alicia Keys, Tyler, The Creator, DJ Dahi and The Neptunes.

The album debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 when it dropped in July, moving 105,000 total album-equivalent units.