Review: Brent Faiyaz's second full-length LP appears as the sprawling, kinematic follow-up to 2020's Fuck The World, emerging from that LP's nihilistic wastes to find a new drift between self-reflexion and regret. Wasteland pulls from a two-year span of scattered sessions across New York, LA, Atlanta and the Bahamas, capturing a disjointed, post-pandemic headspace Faiyaz calls "a life process". Woven with voice-note skits and late-night confessions, it runs 19 tracks deep, where high-gloss collabs with Drake, Tyler, The Creator, Alicia Keys and DJ Dahi help fuel tracks like 'Dead Man Walking' and 'Gravity', which keep the lid sealed shut, over moods of resigned cool and existential drift. The LP's narrative spine, - stitched by exec producer Jonathan "Freeze" Wells - confronts fractured relationships, unwanted fame, and the moral collapse of America.
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