It’s a gorgeous day in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Clinton Hill when I go to Sisters to meet Masego for lunch.
Related
What I Learned from Madonna & Jay-Z Shutting Down New York City With ‘Club Confessions’ & ‘Extra Innings’ This Summer
PJ Morton Rings in Juneteenth with Sprawling ‘Saturday Night, Sunday Morning’ Double LP: ‘I’ve Been Auditioning for This Album My Whole Life’
Saint Harison Talks New ‘Ghosted’ EP, Touring With Sam Smith & Writing That ‘I Hate Beyoncé’ Lyric: ‘This Is the Realest S—t I’ve Ever Written’
As the Grammy-nominated musical polymath stands to greet me, I notice his particularly sporty attire: white tee, grey sweats, and an unassuming hat covering his now-bald head. Not only is he recovering from yesterday’s pickup game – he gave some finance bros the business — but Uncle Sego (which is still his X handle) is also looking kind of cut. With a new look to match his somber, seductive, soul-baring new album, Masego has clearly primed himself for a new era.
“It’s like basketball — I’m focused on the next play,” he tells me. “I’m trying to understand how people are today. I don’t want to be that guy who thinks they know everything because I’ve been in the game for a while. I always see my music as life music; when you listen to me, you’re doing some life s—t. So, I wanted to answer for myself: What am I going to do with these songs? I really would drop the album today if I could.”
Fix Your Face, Masego’s third studio album, instead arrives tomorrow (July 17) via EQT Recordings and Capitol Records. It’s his first studio album since his 2023 self-titled LP — and his first formal collection of new music since losing his home in the January 2025 Southern California wildfires. “Mind you, I was in Brazil at the time, and I’m watching my house burn on TV,” he remembers. “It was [very surreal], and I was in disbelief… then I started to do my I don’t care; I’m tough thing.”
Before the fires, Masego lived in Los Angeles for a decade, during some of the most pivotal moments of his life and career. In that time, “Tadow,” his slow-burning, FKJ-assisted 2017 smash, brought him from Kingston-born, Virginia-bred college dropout to go-to R&B collaborator, trusted by everyone from Kaytranada to Kehlani. Masego didn’t just create memories in L.A.; he formed part of his identity there — and the things that grounded those more ethereal parts of himself in the physical world were now gone forever.
He wasn’t bothered by losing his jewelry as much as he felt distraught in the wake of the destruction of his photo album — he names film photography as a hobby — as well as his vinyl collection, guitars, and his grandfather’s cufflinks. “I had to do the Who am I? thing all over again; I’m too grown for that!” he says. “I’m blessed that I was able to be on a plane a lot, going place to place, so I could process logically first before I could be present and cry. I don’t know what I would do if I was there. I was mad at God for a little bit.”
Now residing in NYC and spending his days soaking up the omnipresence of Jamaican culture in neighborhoods like Crown Heights, Masego is in the mood for a challenge. After all, that’s kind of how Fix Your Face came to be. Last year, his longtime friend and now-manager Kojo Asamoah provoked him, teasing, “Did you just not know how to get better? Is that why you quit? You over there in Brazil playing house.” He poked the bear in a way that only a dear friend could. Masego had indeed taken an extended detour in Brazil, but he didn’t necessarily “quit.”
Three things brought Masego to Brazil: “Tadow” being certified Diamond in the country, growing up around Jamaicans who often rooted for their Brazilian brothers, and a slew of DMs claiming his voice sounds similar to samba legend Jorge Ben Jor’s. Within a few months of moving there, Masego met dope DJs and Black art curators, learned some Portuguese, and even opened a Jamaican restaurant. He also fell in love with how the communal nature of global soccer culture can turn singers out of people who wouldn’t dare utter a single note by their lonesome. Masego brought those cultural observations back to his conversations with Asamoah, who then put the R&B maestro’s songwriting approach under a microscope.
“A lot of artists say that ‘the world just ain’t caught up to them yet’ — but maybe you can get better at communicating with the world,” he notes in between bites of fruit. “At the end of our conversation, I decided to study vulnerability. I wanted to challenge myself to see how open I could be and how little bravado I could use. Being in the game, people don’t really know me — and that’s on purpose. I’m really good at putting a little Gemini distance from myself, so I wanted to let the world into my emotions a bit.”
The songs that came out of those initial sessions quickly grew into 150 tracks — and Masego & Co. knew that they had entered album mode. To ground the album-making process, Masego moved the whole operation to Jamaica for the first two weeks. Sessions continued in New York and Los Angeles, with a return to Jamaica serving as the backdrop for finishing touches. “I’m trying to tell people: If these records succeed, you have to leave me alone,” he half-jokes. “I’m gonna be in Jamaica; I’m gonna make these records, and y’all can’t make me come back! This nose can still smell the fires from New York!”
Known for his freestyle-centric approach — “Tadow” was completely improvised — Masego, for the first time, wrote down music. In another first, Uncle Sego is finally “telling his story in a linear sense.” Album opener “Sounds Like…” finds him relaying how he physically changed his surroundings in his adolescence and thus seized control of his destiny.
As the story goes, as a young Masego was filming his father, his knees buckled, and he passed out, hitting his head on the concrete. That life-altering injury didn’t just leave him with mere flashes of memories of the fateful day; it also coincided with basketball tryouts. Once he was out of the hospital, a few practice shots in the courtyard confirmed that basketball just wasn’t going to happen.
To comfort himself, Masego listened to jazz giants like Herbie Hancock (the video for Faces single “Recommend” pays homage to the Chicago legend’s 1976 “Hang Up Your Hang Ups” visual) and Miles Davis, eventually replacing the basketball posters on his walls with the vinyl he was listening to. With that change of scenery, he officially embarked on his still-unfurling musical path.
“I respect writers,” he says. “Writing is the thing I could never get. At a show, I’m gonna make anybody scream, rock and chant. But there’s a difference at the rap shows — when it’s all the cell phone lights up, and they’re singing the verse. I wouldn’t tell nobody that I wanted that for my shows, but I did. I know my hooks are gonna smash, but I need you to know that I’m trying to tell you something.”
Masego names the hip-hop-infused “Dotted Line,” on which he was “trying to channel Jay Electronica,” as the song he’s most proud of from a writing standpoint, but “Breathe” proved the most emotionally intense to craft. A billowing, gospel- and soul-informed rumination on grief and the battle of living with it in a world that demands constant productivity, “Breathe” had Masego “future-annoyed… because I knew how people were going to treat this song.
“Music can be therapy, so I wrote that song for me,” he continues quietly. “I didn’t care what would happen to it; I just wanted to get it off. And then we all decided to market the hell out of it, which is nasty work. It’s like performing pain. It made me understand Summer Walker: I don’t want to sit here and sing this real song; this is my life.”
In addition to arriving as his first full-length project with a co-producer — Jordan Elgie took the reins alongside Masego this time around — Fix Your Face also boasts guest appearances by Leon Thomas (“QVC”), Keyshia Cole (“Someone”), Musiq Soulchild (“Overthinking”), Buju Banton (“Hello”), Lekan (“Gone”) and Foggieraw (“I Know You”).
Always intentional, the Fix Your Face features are all natural selections. Keyshia Cole and Musiq Soulchild are “the people [he’s] trying to tap into and be some version of one day”; Leon Thomas and Lekan are fellow smooth-talking R&B luminaries, and Jamaica’s Buju Banton and the DMV’s Foggieraw represent the two areas that helped raise Masego. Notably, “QVC” marks Masego and Thomas’ second collaboration in two years, following “Lucid Dreams” from the Billboard cover star’s Grammy-winning Mutt LP.
“I want musicians to win; he’s nerdy with it, and I’m rocking with the nerds,” Masego quips. “He’s a musician’s musician. I made a lot of songs with Leon. I’d do [a joint project with him], but I gotta get better at guitar first. I want to be around people [whom] I respect, and I respect Leon. His pen is cold and clever.”
Masego sourced the album’s title from a one-off comment in a voice note he sent to his team, and, despite the obvious meticulousness with which he approached this record, Fix Your Face still feels effortless. Flirtatious party records like “Recommend” bleed beautifully into revelations of infidelity on “Symone,” and at 16 tracks, the expertly sequenced album never overstays its welcome. Daring in its musical scope and unflinchingly blunt in its explorations of grief, memory, love, faith and lust, Fix Your Face is the perfect album to debut a bald head with.
“Mentally, for me to get myself in a new place, I gotta do an anime-level thing,” explains Masego. “We have to understand the new arc. I gotta get some tattoos or change up my style. And it’s not me putting on a costume; I just can’t go back to the old things.”
As he looks out on the rest of the year — which includes his forthcoming 40-date Fix Your Face Tour across North America, Europe and the U.K. — Masego is also trying his hand at film scoring. His work on the upcoming Mfinda movie will make him the first Black composer to score an anime theatrical film, a full-circle moment for the self-proclaimed “Black nerd,” who’s also working on a Jamaican anime called Raggamutts. With a new album, new tour and more expansive career opportunities on the horizon, Masego just might be entering a space where he no longer has to reflexively fix his face — and that’s a mode of vulnerability he hopes all Black men have the joy and luxury of experiencing in their lifetimes.
“If you put a room of Black men together with the intention to not do the ‘let me just act cool’ thing, you can get somewhere,” he muses. “[Fixing my face] is something I’ve had to do forever. And I think all of us have had to. Fortunately for me, the studio is super safe, so I can act [strangely] or in a way that doesn’t seem as ‘cool’ or ‘strong.’ That’s where we can mix the jokes with vulnerability.”
Hence then, the article about masego hits the reset button with soul baring new fix your face album i was mad at god for a little bit was published today ( ) and is available on billboard ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Masego Hits the Reset Button With Soul-Baring New ‘Fix Your Face’ Album: ‘I Was Mad at God for a Little Bit’ )
Also on site :