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.”
In the first 20 seconds of the album, on “Walls,” Syd sings the words “Baby, I’m hoping to heal…Maybe I’ve grown, but I’m still me.” The third track, “Jasmin,” is about her signature fragrance, Jasmin 17, which she lyrically describes as “sensual and enticing,” “Any Time,” featuring James Fauntleroy, is a sultry song whose opening bass line from its producer, Rapahel Saadiq, puts you in the mood to slow wine despite the song being about the struggle of being unsure of a relationship that you really want. “Always Be Mine,” where Syd sings “I’ve been chasing these demons for miles, just to get some kind of rush,” was the most challenging. “I just couldn’t get in the energy at first,” she says. “Because when I wrote the verses, I was rap-singing it, and then I got in the studio and sang it [softly]. I was like, ‘I missed the angst. I gotta get the angst back.’ Really finding my voice.”
In the four years since Syd’s last album, she’s undergone major transformations. It began when a line she’d written years ago (“But I like it, baby”) found its way into the hook of Beyoncé’s “Plastic Off the Sofa”; the song went on to win a Grammy in 2023. Then, in 2024, she quit alcohol and purchased her first home in her childhood neighborhood of Baldwin Hills, on the same street as her parents. “I live in a neighborhood where everybody’s been there for years, and I’m the youngest one on the block,” she says. “But because of that, everybody watches out for my house.” Last July, she married her wife, Simone, in a courthouse ceremony in L.A. “We literally got our appointment three days before our wedding date,” she says. “It was small, just my parents, brother, and my aunt. Honestly, my plan was to do a big wedding later, but for both of us the concern was making sure we have rights to each other.”
Purchasing a home in the same lowkey L.A. neighborhood where she grew up felt like a refined return to her childhood. Throughout her youth, Syd’s mother played a boundless amount of soul and reggae on the weekends. Her father’s brother, Mikey Bennett, a record producer from their home country of Jamaica, worked with major acts including Shabba Ranks and Dennis Brown. Syd learned piano at four years old, along with drums, and taught herself guitar on a nylon-string instrument that her mother owned. Yet it wasn’t until high school that she started to carve out her own space. “I feel like I was such a late bloomer,” she says. “Over the past couple years I have come to appreciate the role of being an artist versus being a songwriter and a producer, because I wasn’t an artist when I got into the industry. I was a studio engineer, and I wanted to be a producer, and eventually wanted to be a songwriter, but I didn’t want to be an artist.”
As a result, she spent a good portion of her high school years in her bedroom recording her friends and other local artists (like Vince Staples), while also writing R&B songs periodically to post on her MySpace page. “I was more obsessed with sound quality and getting my studio to be legit, which led to me getting a record deal being an engineer for Odd Future,” she says. That in turn led to her entry into the world of DJing: “A guy who wanted to sign us at the time took us to an M.I.A. concert, and we’re watching her DJ before she comes out, and it’s this cool-ass girl with a short haircut. The dude was like, ‘Have you ever thought of DJing for the group? You should.’ I just thought she was fine as hell and was trying to find her after the show. I wasn’t thinking about it like that.” But that Christmas, she got a DJ controller and taught herself to mix and blend, just in time for her crew’s first tour two months later.
As the only woman in Odd Future, she found herself in a new spotlight. “It was nerve-racking,” she says. “I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing, but I took the opportunity. I didn’t grow up being the center of attention, so adjusting to being onstage was different. I knew I was coming out of my shell.”
While the group’s success helped her discover new aspects of herself, it was also a rough patch for her, as she was dealing with undiagnosed depression. “It was tough because I wasn’t on medication, so touring at 19 and 20 and [going from] being in my mom’s house, in the studio, just fucking around, to sold-out shows every day with this rowdiness was an adjustment.” Yet Syd has no regrets. She credits those early experiences with Odd Future with preparing her to be the frontwoman of the Internet, and eventually to start a solo career. “Growing up, I feel like I kind of had to put my own vision of myself together,” she says. “Whenever you can’t find anyone to emulate, you’re gonna be that, and there was nobody I could be like.”
Syd is in a much better place now with her mental health. “I am a firm believer that as creations here on Earth, it’s our job to create, but I don’t think it’s our job to create for this fucking rat race,” she says. “It’s gotta be for us, so if that means creating out of a space of ‘I gotta pour this out,’ then you gotta do that.” She points to her late friend Mac Miller as an example. “He was one of my best friends, and was really good at writing from that place. A lot of the first Internet songs were that kind of vibe. It was me really battling my depression, but trying to see the glass half-full. Personally, I feel better not doing that and putting myself there on purpose. Like, I can’t just sit in this. I’m not about to put on a sad-ass beat and write about this shit.”
When Syd released Broken Hearts Club, her fans, whom she credits as “respectful” and chill, sensed her melancholy and often commented they missed the “old Syd.” “I think that some of what people have missed is some of the attitude that I used to put more in the front,” she says, mentioning the Internet’s 2015 breakthrough album, Ego Death, and her own 2017 solo debut, Fin. “I lost some of that mojo going through that heartbreak. I love Broken Hearts Club as a project, but as a performer, I knew it wasn’t my best because I was so heartbroken. But I had to get that out in order to move on.”
These days, in addition to her extensive car collection, Syd enjoys the simple life of being married and sitting at home. She’s been examining the ways she shows up in both places, noticing that she’s found herself in what she calls “a lot of male gender roles,” such as yardwork — something she thoroughly enjoys. “I spend 98 percent of my day in the garage with my dogs, just playing, chilling, and watching TV. I paint and garden and I’m like ‘Wow, this is me living life,’” she says. “If I didn’t do another show, but I got to do this every day, I’d be really happy. I’d rather run to that than run to music to free myself of sadness.”
She’s excited to be releasing Beard on the same day as her Internet bandmate Steve Lacy’s new album, Oh Yeah? “Releasing our solo albums the same day was intentional,” Syd says. “I was like, ‘Oh, that might be cool actually if we dropped [our albums] on the same day. If Steve’s down, I’m down’ — because who does that on purpose? I thought that it would be really fun. We’re probably the only niggas that could do that.”
As our conversation wraps, a fan in the cafe notices her and politely gives Syd her kudos. “I feel blessed to have two different outlets as an artist,” Syd adds. “A band and a solo thing. Something that I made a point to do during this era was to really draw the lines between Syd and the Internet and make it more defined. It was a disservice to the band and to me. I feel like the Internet has a sound, and as far as me by myself, I was still finding that specific theme. I feel like I got a step closer with this one.”