Syd was still in her teens when she began to change the sound of pop and R&B. That’s when she and friends like Tyler, the Creator, Earl Sweatshirt, and Frank Ocean started releasing music and calling themselves the Odd Future collective, with Syd’s childhood bedroom in L.A. serving as their main hub and creative space. But that was nearly two decades ago, and Syd’s perspective on life as a millennial has changed.
“I have a theory that I came up with last night,” the singer and producer tells me over an iced espresso with vanilla and almond milk at a Black-owned cafe she recently discovered in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. “I think 30 is the new 20. Unfortunately, for Gen X, it was the opposite. It was like, once you’re 30, it was, ‘All right, where your kids at?’ and if you didn’t have kids, you were Peter Pan. Gen Z is starting to exhibit some of that too. But I feel like, for us, me and my peers, it seems like 30 was that time we accepted who we are. We all knew who we were, but coming to accept it took time.”
This is one of the major themes on her third solo album, Beard, out July 17. The 11-track release comes four years after her last album, Broken Hearts Club, where she sang about the end of a relationship as she approached her 30th birthday. Now, at 34, Syd is embracing the insecurities she once tried to hide, and defining a sound of her own outside the music she makes with her acclaimed band, the Internet. “I have a newfound sense of confidence and assuredness,” she says. “One of the intentions with Beard was trying to plant my flag as far as the sound goes. I feel like the Internet has a sound, and I felt like, as far as me, by myself, I was still finding that specific theme.”
