For being such a breezy new voice, Syd—the charismatic songwriter and performer at the center of R&B group the Internet—is unleashing her debut solo album with a curiously resolute title: Fin. The artist, born Sydney Bennett in Los Angeles, is just 24, part of a loose kinship of musicians, like Frank Ocean and her brother Taco, who rode into public consciousness with Odd Future and Tyler, the Creator (much of Odd Future’s early work was produced in Syd’s home studio, at her parent’s house). Though she and the Internet have released three albums together, it was the 2015 Ego Death that provided a breakthrough, gaining them a Grammy nomination and a certified smash in the Kaytranada-produced single “Girl.” Now she’s trying it out on her own, with an album of twelve slick hits that are the best proof yet of what she is capable of as an artist. Aren’t things just beginning?
Fin is, indeed, a fresh start. Stepping away momentarily from the Internet finds her as comfortable and focused as she’s ever sounded. “This is my descent into the depth I want the band to get to,” she told the FADER last year. “For me, this is like an in-between thing—maybe get a song on the radio, maybe make some money, have some new shit to perform.” Working with a variety of superstar producers, like MeLo-X and Hit-Boy, she leans on her different influences—boastful hip-hop, hippie neo-soul, sensual R&B—without ever losing the thread that ties them together: her inventive songwriting and magnetic personality, which leaps from the speakers every time she opens her mouth. Syd has perfected a pose, a slouching shrug and studied distance that makes her appealing, if a little remote. On Fin, it’s better defined than it ever has been.
She uses this bemused vantage point to reinvigorate some R&B archetypes, inhabiting them and winking slightly at the same time. The opening number, “Shake Em Off,” is all dirt-off-your-shoulders bravado: “Young star in the making/Swear they sleeping on me” she sings casually. Track two is called “Know,” and it is an Aaliyah bop, with Syd singing—in the airiest part of her vocal register and over a sputtering beat—about keeping a hook-up hidden away from the public. “Got Her Own” is a playful gay flip on the theme of loving a girl for her independence and ambition. On a quick sensual interlude called “Drown in It,” Syd sounds as proudly nasty as Ty Dolla $ign when she promises to “Swim in it/Dive in it/Drown in it/Hide in it, babe.” And there is “Body,” a minimalist moment that’s sole aim seems to be uncomplicated sensuality; as she told Zane Lowe in a recent interview, she just wanted it to be the “baby-making anthem of 2017.” This is a demonstrably cool album, but it’s hot when it needs to be, and gay listeners (like myself) will be psyched to have songs that are romantic and sexy but do not belabor the fact that they are sung from one woman to another, manifested by an artist who sounds entirely comfortable with her persona and talent.
On the final track, the revealingly titled “Insecurities,” she shows that there is, in fact, another side to her beneath the relaxed exterior: a woman who may sound self-assured, but who gets stuck in the same toxic bullshit that so many of us do, in this case a girl she loves with all her heart who can’t return the favor. Here, she sounds a little beleaguered and hesitant, singing, at first, about packed suitcases but an inability to leave. “You can thank my insecurities,” she sings. “They’re the reason I was down so long.” It’s a welcome omen that there’s deeper psychological anxieties for her to explore on the next album, and I’d love to hear more about that more vulnerable Syd. But by the end of the track, we’re back to where we started, and the song ends with a stiff upper lip and a casual middle finger, melting into a pool of psychedelia. On Fin, what Syd seems to want to portray most of all is an admirable, inspirational confidence, a young woman singing and rapping while totally at ease with the beats that please her most.
