How Syd found new life as an old soul

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Set us as preferred In the Mid-City neighborhood where Syd grew up, lots of people now refer to this 34-year-old musician as the mayor.“During COVID, I’d spend all day on the grass waving at everybody,” she says with a laugh.More recently, a bunch of “unruly teenagers,” as Syd describes them, have been doing doughnuts in the street near her parents’ house.“I’m out there talking about, ‘Hey! Stop!’ I had one of my trucks parked in front, so I was like, ‘Y’all ain’t finna mess my s— up.’ But also they were hanging out the window — it was really dangerous.” She laughs again.“I’m an old head when it comes to safety.”Syd’s new album happily embraces a sense of maturity — of “feeling more sure of myself than I ever have,” she says.

Released last week, “Beard” — the title was inspired by Syd’s wife’s request that she maintain the peach fuzz on her upper lip — sets thoughts of romantic commitment and professional achievement against gleaming R&B grooves that occasionally nod toward Afrobeats or bossa nova.It’s Syd’s third solo LP since she emerged nearly two decades ago as a member of the Los Angeles hip-hop collective Odd Future; it also comes eight years after her most recent album with the Internet, the Grammy-nominated soul-music combo she shares with Matt Martians and Steve Lacy (the latter of whom dropped his new “Oh Yeah?” on the same day Syd dropped “Beard”).

Music While writing “Oh Yeah?,” Lacy “had moments where I was like, ‘This is gonna be great.’ And God or whatever higher power was like, ‘Now, now.’ This album was a practice of ‘Sit the f- down.’”Yet for all the growing up she’s done, “ironically, I feel younger than I’ve ever felt,” Syd says.“Beard’s” blurry cover photo, which shows her shaved head and slightl...