“I feel like a lot of s--t that comes out now, it doesn't really touch on all aspects of human emotion, you feel me?” he says over the phone of the importance of bringing forth personal evolution in his work. “You'd be surprised how many people do not give a f--k about [how others feel]. Everything is very one-sided. Either everybody's super happy, super sappy, or like, super heartless. [There’s] not really no in-between… I feel like you should talk about everything.”
Gluttonous levels of love, sex and money -- stereotypical epitomes of the rockstar lifestyle -- are central themes of several songs on F--k The World. The multi-hyphenate cuts right to the chase on the snap-heavy “Rehab” (“If you ain’t nasty, don’t ‘@’ me,” he affirms), and throughout “Soon Az I Get Home (Interlude),” he envisions ecstasy with unapologetic anticipation (“I live life on the roam, but soon as I get home, you gon' ride 'til infinity,” he repeats).
However, many tracks on the EP find our hero ruminating on society’s stickiest subjects, such as mental and psychological health and basic human decency. From his disdain for how people treat others (“F--k what set you bang, what hood you claim, we all come from the same,” he croons on the mystical project opener “Skyline”), to questioning the legacy he’ll leave behind on the retrospective “Clouded,” he aims to peel back the good, bad and ugly layers of mankind.
This honest artistic approach, Faiyaz details, helps to identify what sort of content gravitates best among his fan base. “When you're initially making music, you’re kind of just shooting at the air,” he continues. “Once [listeners] tell you what it is that they appreciate about you, it's a little easier to create around that… [I’m afforded] the opportunity to take a step back from reality and just create.”
Faiyaz’s misanthropic musings remain mostly on wax: he explains that when he gets in “f--k the world”-type moods of his own, the outlet he uses to channel his feelings will always be through song. On Sonder Son’s “First World Problemz/Nobody Carez,” he chastises Donald Trump and offers the worldwide solution of brotherly love, while “Why’z It So Hard” from his 2018 EP Lost is centered around the injustices he faces as a black man. His thoughts on the planet at large have become staples in his work, which he calls “catharsis.”
“People will listen to a song and expect that you just have that persona on all the time,” he says of his perceivably glum demeanor. “But really, that was your one outlet that one day to get that emotion out. The only difference was you put it on a canvas that's going to be there forever.”
The DMV native is embarking on a multi-city tour beginning to support FTW -- it begins in mid-March in Oregon, and concludes in Minneapolis in early-May. He states he’s most excited to travel to different cities and experience the cultures each new location has to offer. Faiyaz details that he’s also in the midst of working on new material, although some fans may still be learning the words to the songs on his latest offering. While there’s “no telling” when his upcoming project Make It Out Alive will drop, he’s hoping it will be “as soon as possible,” as he laughs about taking no breaks. As recent high-profile deaths have taught him, life is “not guaranteed,” and he hopes to keep “going hard” and letting his artistry shine through.
“I work while I'm on the move, so I'm able to book sessions in different cities,” he says, noting that he was scheduled to head to the studio later that day. “[I’m] just cooking up as much as I can before tour, during the tour, and after the tour, and we piece it together. I'm not even nowhere near what I want to be at. It's just the beginning, for real.”
