It’s a balmy Monday afternoon in London when NME meets Syd within the foyer of Shoreditch’s Aethos Lodge. Wearing a charcoal co-ord and funky gray Air Jordan IVs, she’s in a chirpy temper, laughing about how her longtime barber again dwelling not too long ago really useful she purchase her personal clippers whereas she’s on her London retreat. The dialog quickly drifts to her 2025 run supporting Billie Eilish on the Hit Me Laborious And Gentle Tour – reveals she jokingly “didn’t inform my followers about” as a result of tickets bought out lightning quick.
The trade serves as a reminder of the various hats Syd, now 34, has worn throughout a profession spanning nearly twenty years – quietly popping up in a few of trendy music’s most influential corners. Born Sydney Bennett, the Los Angeles native first emerged as a part of the cult 2010s rap collective Odd Future (alongside the likes of Earl Sweatshirt, Frank Ocean and Tyler, The Creator) earlier than forming The Web with beat maestro Matt Martians. Joined by Patrick Paige II, Chris Smith, Jameel Bruner and Tay Walker – with Steve Lacy later rounding out the line-up – the band developed from an Odd Future offshoot into certainly one of various R&B’s defining acts, culminating in 2015’s Grammy-nominated breakthrough, ‘Ego Loss of life’.
Few new-gen R&B acts have forged a cultural web as huge as The Web has. Heralded by critics and followers alike, the group’s 4 LPs have Syd’s silken voice firmly on the bedrock of their sound. Nonetheless, regardless of a profession that’s taken her from cult hero to Grammy winner, she likens her third solo album, ‘Beard’, to a coming-of-age romantic comedy.
Gems just like the poppy, plucky and romantic ‘Jasmin 17’ and the mushy rock-tinged James Fauntleroy collaboration ‘Any Time’ seize an artist comfy in her personal pores and skin – embracing experimentation and calculated dangers with out dropping sight of her soulful centre. “For essentially the most half, it’s simply feeling grown up,” Syd tells NME. “It’s this newfound confidence and contentment with the place I’m at and the pores and skin that I’m in.”
That sense of creative openness extends to the album’s enclave of collaborators, with Syd inviting a wellspring of creatives into the fold throughout the 11-track LP, together with the R&B legend Raphael Saadiq in addition to Massive Sean, Jordan Ward and Dice – with Syd producing the majority of the report herself.
“The title might be deeper than most individuals would guess,” she explains. “Rising up as a woman, there are requirements we’re supposed to satisfy, and I’ve at all times fallen in need of these requirements. Sooner or later, I simply stopped making an attempt. Once I was making the album, I began letting my facial hair develop. My spouse preferred it. I shaved it, and she or he was like, ‘Ew, put it again.’”
After we final caught up with Syd in spring 2022, it was for a session on the ‘Damaged Hearts Membership’ – a soulful love letter underscored by balladry and besotted ideas. It was the form of album you retain stashed in a boombox able to blast exterior of your crush’s window. Behind the scenes, Syd’s real-life romance formally turned certain by diamond rings and everlasting vows – mirroring the album’s smitten worldbuilding.
Syd introduced her longtime associate at a Boston gig in June 2022, however one other lifelong milestone proved much more elusive. Shopping for a home, she says, took “an additional 10 years” longer than she anticipated. “My mother purchased her first home when she was 23. I anticipated to have the ability to do the identical,” she says. “Till I did it, I felt like I used to be failing at these goals. Again within the day, a loopy album placement with a celebrity may set you up for all times, however it’s not like that anymore.”
“Rising up as a woman, there are requirements we’re supposed to satisfy, and I’ve at all times fallen in need of these”
Naturally, the rollercoaster nature of Syd’s life funnelled its manner into ‘Beard’, giving the report a newfound sense of confidence and pathos. Away from her personal catalogue, she has quietly turn out to be certainly one of modern R&B’s most trusted collaborators, lending her pen, visitor vocals and manufacturing chops to acts like Giveon, Disclosure, Kilo Kish and Zayn. Regardless of Syd’s sonic facet quests and pure means to supply a voice for others, lead single ‘Callin’ noticed her offload the narrative work to the Grammy-award-winning manufacturing duo Nova Wav, who’ve beforehand labored with Rihanna, Ariana Grande and Jay-Z.
“When their title got here up, I used to be like, ‘Hell yeah. I’d like to work with them,’” Syd states. “They’re superior. We related after each being a part of [Beyoncé’s] ‘Renaissance’ a number of years again.” The pair first crossed paths throughout a three-day writing camp organised by Syd’s new label, the place ‘Callin’ emerged because the very first tune they made collectively – and, because it turned out, the one one from the camp to outlive the album. “Initially, I didn’t even ship it to the label,” she admits. Blu June, one half of Nova Wav, handles the observe’s bubblegum R&B hook as a result of, to Syd, doing it herself initially “felt like a parody of myself”.
‘Callin’ relishes in starry-eyed brunch dates and yearns for one’s vital different. Elsewhere, ‘Beard’ standout ‘My Love’ would possibly sound comparable at first look, however in actuality, Syd says, it’s “on some R&B gangsta shit”. She jokingly recounts the tune’s origins, which spawned from a real-life bitter state of affairs.
Recorded throughout a two-week stint at Raphael Saadiq’s studio, the observe got here collectively nearly fully by improvisation after a colleague made an ill-advised go at Syd’s spouse. The outcome was a young love ballad with a barely armoured edge – Syd’s tender but wry response to the scenario – with mellow percussion and shiny synths in addition. “That entire beat was recorded in a single take,” she explains. “I wrote the melody in a single take as nicely.”
Her musical co-pilots are cool, however Syd’s diaristic detours make for a number of the most compelling materials on ‘Beard’. The soul-struck, slow-rolling nearer ‘2 Many Days’ (a observe initially cooked up within the classes for her final album) is equal elements meditative and rightfully big-mouthed. She briefly revisits her early “Syd tha Kyd” days, reminding listeners she’s “been on it since MySpace”, earlier than barrelling into suffocating contemplation. “Early in my Odd Future days, and kind of not too long ago too, I believe I seemed like I knew what I used to be doing, however I actually didn’t,” she displays earlier than pivoting her headspace to brighter pastures. “The anxiousness was crippling, however it bought higher over time.”
When pressed on the precise second her mindset started to shift, Syd factors to 1 career-defining second: co-writing ‘Plastic Off the Couch’ for Beyoncé’s Grammy-winning ‘Renaissance’. “To this present day, it’s in all probability certainly one of my largest accomplishments,” she says. “Truthfully, I didn’t really feel tremendous safe earlier than that. I suppose I didn’t really feel validated as a result of it needed to come from inside, not by exterior components.”
That shift in perspective in the end knowledgeable the sharp confidence of her newest album. “I’ve by no means tried to make a success,” she says. “Profession-wise, the distinction between this album and even the previous two [albums] is that I actually had one foot in and one foot out of being an artist – possibly not musically, however positively career-wise. I really feel like ‘Beard’ is me in full management.”
Nonetheless, as Syd seems to be ahead to her post-album celebrations, hitting the stage stays the precedence – particularly with a reunion of kinds on the horizon as she joins longtime good friend Tyler, The Creator at London’s All Factors East Pageant. “What are the chances that we’d all be elsewhere, separate, however nonetheless collectively and as a household extra so than a collective now?” she expresses.
“The Web is larger than all of us; it’s tremendous particular to me”
As we close to the top of our dialog, Syd displays on her journey from Odd Future’s quietly understated DJ and crooner to a Grammy-winning solo artist, songwriter and producer in her personal proper. “In lower than two years from now, it’ll be like 20 years since Odd Future, and I form of blew up,” she says, equally startled by the clock’s unruly wrath and grateful for all of her hovering accomplishments. Nonetheless, Syd’s artistic coasting hasn’t been all bump-free. Throughout The Web’s 2018 ‘Hive Thoughts’ period, she was nonetheless battling the efficiency anxiousness that had adopted her because the group’s earliest days, with pre-show push-ups changing into a part of her ritual to settle her nerves.
However as one chapter closes, one other seems to be opening: Syd provides a glimpse into the way forward for The Web, revealing the beloved collective has quietly been again within the studio and is nearing completion on a brand new challenge. “Me and Steve [Lacy] releasing our albums on the identical day may be very a lot intentional,” she says, earlier than turning her consideration to the followers nonetheless ready for indicators of a reunion on the group’s dormant Instagram web page, the place feedback on a 2024 studio publish have continued to pile up.
“You might in all probability discover my mother in these feedback speaking about, ‘They’re not mendacity. It’s occurring,’” she laughs, explaining how the group have spent the previous yr carving out time to report every time Matt Martians is again in Los Angeles. “We’ll spend per week, per week and a half within the studio simply vibing. It’s been nearly 5 years of recording, however we’re nearly completed now. The Web is larger than all of us; it’s tremendous particular to me. The beauty of it’s all of us have flexibility and our personal solo factor, and that’s dope. It permits issues like ‘Beard’ to be all that they are often.”
Within the time since The Web have been final lively, Syd has grown quite a bit, and she or he quantifies her impartial improvement by the numbers on the boards. “On ‘Fin’ [Syd’s debut], I believe I solely produced three songs,” she causes. “For ‘Damaged Hearts Membership’, I did 5. For this new one, it’s 10. I’m doubling up; it’s loopy.”
Syd’s ‘Beard’ is out now through Warner Data.