In many ways, R&B music is like reggae or other highly specialized genres of music that are ultimately more about feeling than technique, which is why novices and dilletantes fall so hard when they try and fail.
That’s also a reason why an album by an artist like Brent Faiyaz, hailed by many as a leading light for R&B, crushes so many of the other hopeful entries into the genre: The man is such a gifted singer and songwriter that he could probably sneeze and it would sound soulful.
The sound of “Icon,” his second and latest full-length (amid multiple EPs, a mixtape, singles and features with Drake, Alicia Keys, 21 Savage and more), is fully forward looking while acknowledging and building on the foundation of multiple influences and forebears. There’s the innovation of Prince, Lauryn Hill, D’Angelo and Frank Ocean (Faiyaz’s voice is sped-up or slowed-down in many places on this album) but also flashes of more mainstream precedents like Luther Vandross, Jodeci and Usher.
The arrangements are largely electronic, particularly the beats, but the most vivid instrument is his versatile, multi-tracked voice, which recalls the best work of Mary J. Blige, Beyonce and of course Prince in making one voice sound like many. His voice(s) take on the supporting melodic role ordinarily played by keyboards, guitars and horns, making for a sound that your ears know is different, but it’s done so skillfully that you don’t immediately realize why it’s different.
