Syd

Beard is Syd at her most mature and self-assured, swimming in the sonic waters of an arrival at oneself after years of existing as part of a collective. At 34 years old, Syd has had a public career for half of her life, which means her perspective is not only impacted by the types of private memories we can all relate to, but also by a unique reality of documented performances, archival interviews, and evidence of her various professional and personal shifts along the way.

Growing up, Syd and her brother Travis Bennett were raised on their mother’s Sérgio Mendes and Les Nubians albums, and listened to Daft Punk and clean pop hits on Radio Disney during daily car rides on the way to school with their father. “She was like the neo-soul baby… [listening to] the albums that people look back on now and talk about as legendary,” Bennett, formerly known as Taco, says of his sister’s early sonic influences.

In her adolescence, Syd came into public consciousness as a member of Odd Future, which popularized a form of gritty, playful, alternative hip-hop that still reverberates today. This genre is seemingly a departure from the formative records that Syd grew up on, but categories aside, versatility has always been one of her greatest assets, which makes her path to a more mellowed out, soulful sound as a solo artist not the least bit surprising.

The West Coast has a long history of an underground, punk sensibility for gathering and creation — from L.A.’s independent jazz ensembles like the Pan Afrikan Peoples Arkestra to Orange County’s ska bands — and it was this attitude of improvisation, provocation, and DIY fun that catapulted Odd Future and its rotating cast of characters (rappers, DJs, hypemen, skaters, photographers, designers, producers) into the mainstream. So often, groups of young Black people are reductively rendered as troubled, wayward, nefarious “gangs” in mass media, but the beauty of OF (particularly in retrospect) was that they were upending these negative connotations radically and by accident, cementing themselves as legends of the blog era just by being real.

But when I search my mind for Syd in those early days, I can’t quite locate her. I knew she was there, but couldn’t exactly make out her contours — like a mirage that emerged and faded in and out of my line of sight. Was I not looking hard enough for the only woman in the group, who in many ways was an anchor for all of this to unfold, or did she not yet want to be found?

“It had to be hard to be the only girl in that group of n*ggas, who were ridiculously insane,” Bennett tells me over the phone. “For her to be mature enough to sit through these things for the amount of time she did… She’s dealt with it all and taken it with grace.” Reflecting on the era now, Syd calls it “a little trippy” to think about. “Spiritually I feel younger now than I did when all of that was happening during that whole era,” she tells me. “[But] I’m also able to appreciate it. There was so much growth that came from those times…energetically and personality-wise, we were a diverse bunch for sure.”

But Syd’s big break came with The Internet, the alternative R&B and soul band founded by Syd and Matt Martians in 2011 as one of the Odd Future collective’s many sub-groups. Their debut project, Purple Naked Ladies, a dreamy, jazzy, trip-hop effort, is what can best be described, in a word, as a “vibe.” 2013’s Feel Good came next, with the band later expanding to include guitarist Steve Lacy, bassist Patrick Paige II, and drummer Christopher Smith. In 2016, Syd covered this very magazine for the second time as part of The Internet, right as the band was reaching the peak of their powers following the release of 2015’s Ego Death — and beginning to branch out to pursue solo careers.

It makes sense then that the record she considers to be her “most honest out of the three” was made as she slowly found home in her sanctuary. Sanctuary can be defined in many ways: a house, a church, the studio, an embrace. On Beard, she seems to find comfort in the sanctuary of self. The magic of Syd’s songs is that they sound like they’re meant for her to sing them, as if she writes precisely for the pocket of her own voice. She admits she used to view this proclivity as a bit of a roadblock, making it occasionally difficult to place songs with other artists; her first solo album, Fin, was filled with songs she’d written to give away. “That’s why this album, Beard, feels the most personal,” she says. “I wrote all of these songs for me to sing.”

Beyond lyrics like “I know I can be a menace / sort of inconsistent sometimes / make you question your opinion / I know I be trippin’ don’t lie” on “Jasmin 17” being written specifically from her own lived experience, Beard is also a personal album because it was created fully in the universe Syd created for herself — sonically, conceptually, and literally in the place she feels most safe: the crib. The blurry, black-and-white portrait on the album’s cover was shot in her garage, and the majority of the tracks were recorded between her home studios.

“Maybe it’s a do-it-yourself spirit that I have where I’m just like, We could do this at the house,” she says. “Personally, I think I thrive more in relaxed energies and spaces.”

The artists she tapped to feature on the album reflect how much wider her community has grown over the years, people she not only considers peers but with whom she’s cool outside of music, too. Big Sean, who lent a verse to Beard’s lead single “GMFU,” also coincidentally broke out in 2007, making his and Syd’s paths in music parallel albeit separate and distinct. “It’s like we grew up together but with space in between us,” he says, adding: “When we finally got to collab I was super excited. [Syd’s] not one of them people that just says ‘let’s get in the studio’ on some industry shit and dips off. I appreciate her for being authentic.” Jordan Ward, a fellow R&B artist whose smoky, effortless style feels like a natural fit for the sultriness of Syd’s production, was a fan of his collaborator far before he knew her personally. “Her vocal performance and the instrumentation and the chords she uses all pull at me emotionally, it always feels very intimate,” he says.

Syd also collaborated with Raphael Saadiq, who served as a mentor and co-producer on some of Beard’s tracks. Calling from somewhere in the Hollywood Hills, he describes her as “mad cool…always with a little joint in her right ear,” which made it easy for them to work together. “She would listen to music for melody a lot before she would even think about singing. She’s more of a thinker. She can see the end in the beginning, and that’s what producers do.”

Her foundation as an engineer has sharpened her ear and made her attuned to all aspects of the song-making process. Recording vocals, in fact, is Syd’s least favorite part of making music. “I record in private,” she says. “That’s where I have to be [most] disciplined in my career. There’s so little control with the voice. There’s control, but half of it is an illusion of control, because your body is the instrument.” Though I’m initially surprised to hear how much of Syd’s singing is the result of a sense of duty, on second thought, I realize it might be the reason her vocal performances feel so raw. You can hear her solitude in her songs, unencumbered by the approach of a singer trying to perform lyrics.

“If I’m sad I can’t sing or I’ll start crying,” she adds. “You’ll know I’m in a good mood if I start stimming random vocals. When I’m not in a good mood you won’t hear me at all.”

After nearly two decades of friendship with the Odd Future crew, being a bandmate as part of The Internet, and rising as a solo artist, Syd only recently began to really take notice of how much her life has changed. She hit her late 20s, then her early 30s, “looked up, looked around, and was like, ‘Oh nice.’”

“She’s just done everything I didn’t expect her to do as far as who I know her to be, [which is a] more quiet homebody,” Bennett says of watching his older sister’s transition from an engineer behind the scenes to a solo artist. “For her to evolve from that to where she is [now]…she is truly a caterpillar that turned into a butterfly. That couldn’t be more of a metaphor for her.”

Syd has been calling the current life season she’s in her “acceptance of self” era, which has been made possible by a career full of lessons and accidental experiences. “In hindsight it’s dope,” she says. “When you’re growing up and every phase is documented it can feel like, Agh, dammit! You guys caught my ugly phase! But it’s all a part of life.”

During our picnic-style meet-up, Syd and I were constantly fidgeting, shifting our weight from one leg to another so as to not let either of our feet fall asleep. We didn’t really acknowledge it, but there seemed to be a wordless understanding. In a strange way this made it plain for me how Syd’s subtle focus and groundedness made her into the artist and collaborator she is today. As our conversation slowed around the two hour mark and it was finally time to stand up, Syd rose more quickly than I did, as I, still seated, confirmed that my audio recording had saved. Without missing a beat, she extended her hand to help me up, her innate nature as a supporter, as someone whose default is to move in consideration of the collective, coming into full and clear view.