BRENT FAIYAZ - Icon

It takes courage to put the murkiest colors of your character down in black and white. But Brent Faiyaz has built a career on it: he's the last Lothario of rhythm'n'blues, perpetually brooding behind dark shades, a sex symbol who loves to torment and be tormented with every new conquest, because love isn't beautiful unless it's toxic and torn apart by regret. Of course, the risk is huge — we live in an era where this kind of masculinity isn't so easy to pull off, let alone acceptable, as we've seen in the recent media decline of the ultimate certified lover boy, Drake, even if the other rapper, Future, is the figure best suited to embody the sin of lust in the modern American music landscape.

No matter, Brent carries on down his own path with a third studio album released independently after months of setbacks and a first launch derailed by gossip, since online rumors speculated about a liaison with Halle Bailey while she was still involved with rapper DDG, already the father of her child — in the end it wasn't true, but by then Brent fit the profile of the third wheel to call in times of crisis a little too well.

Instead, despite a certainly bombastic title, "Icon" is a pleasant surprise, coming across as a mature listen in both themes and structure, polished by an elegant, modern sound orchestrated between electro-acoustic colors and rhythms on the tip of funk — the hand of Raphael Saadiq as executive producer is palpable. Brent is still in love, of course, but he's no longer dragging himself through other people's beds in search of cheap dopamine; he's discovered a renewed devotion to the partner waiting for him at home — it will never be all roses and flowers, sure, but now that he's turned thirty, maybe it's worth giving it a shot at least once.

So here he is, all polished up on the glossy ballad "World Is Yours", almost like a Marvin Gaye transported into the 1980s of sophisti-pop, or daydreaming against the plucked strings of "Four Seasons". These are subtle moments, but fitting ones; after the splendid orchestral intro "White Noise", we come across the acoustic warmth of "Wrong Faces", a track in which it's Brent who becomes the stable pillar of the relationship, in a surprising role reversal. Pleading, melancholic and floating, "Butterflies" spreads its wings with rare interpretive delicacy, while the melodious "Strangers" is even more emotional, sustained by a mature lyrical honesty.

In short, "Icon" is a winner. A rare release in the male r&b landscape capable of standing tall with its own personality, without rehashing the exploits of the usual Weeknd, the genre's latest superstar in order of appearance. Because even when Brent slides across the fluorescent tiles of Michael Jackson with "Other Side", or loses himself in a stylish post-disco slow jam like "Pure Fantasy", the hand stays steady on the wheel; the mood, kept perfectly in step, never lets itself go into misplaced effusiveness nor leans on overused vintage templates.

The only real letdown is the bizarre use of vocal filters on "Have To", a track that could have been a duet with a female guest (Ari Lennox would have been perfect), but overall the listen is solid even when "Vanilla Sky" closes it out with a brief acoustic touch — indeed, with just ten songs for barely half an hour of runtime, "Icon" also wins on brevity, another point of no small importance for so-called "love albums". It's hard, if anything, to picture the artist's profile in mainstream terms the way one might have glimpsed back at the time of the previous "Wasteland" (2022), especially now that he's going solo, but for once even independent criticism has something to sink its teeth into, gossip and infidelity aside. Really not bad at all.

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23/02/2026