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Tthis was the time when Sydney Bennett really wanted “something to show off all my hard work”. The 34-year-old singer-rapper-producer-engineer was a member of Odd Futurea classic Los Angeles rap group that included Tyler, The Creator, Frank Ocean and Earl Sweatshirt. In 2011, the group launched the Internet, an indie-R&B group Bennett formed with his close friend, Matt Martians. Since then, Bennett has released two solo albums, collaborated with Beyoncé and Kehlani, and been nominated for a Grammy, in addition to the Internet.
However, by the time of his last album, 2022’s Broken Hearts Club, he began to expect awards or public recognition. But then he bought a house – a nice place on the same street where he grew up in Mid-City, LA – “and now I’m happy”. I watch him curiously, as he sits across from me in a private room in an east London hotel, sipping pineapple juice. Was it as simple as that, I ask? He lets out a guffaw, flashing his perfect teeth. “I’m afraid it was,” he says, laughing slyly.
Bennett minimizes his profile. He is small, with a shaved head, and likes neutral words; today, he is wearing gray shoes, large gray jeans and a gray sweatshirt with broken sides. On his new album, Beard, his voice is quietly commanding – a sinister R&B purr on one side, glassy smoothness on the other. But in his eyes he laughs out loud, cracks silly jokes and comes across as a music lover, happy to show me pictures of the studio he built in his parents’ house. We’re here to talk about Beard, who was named after the peachy pout on his upper lip, but sometimes he seems too excited to talk about the amazing things his teammates are up to.
Part of the reason Bennett no longer feels like he needs respect is that he’s now making music that sounds like him. He describes Beard as his “first album”. His debut single, Fin, released in 2017, was inspired by his desire to prove his music and hire other people. He felt that releasing one of the best R&B songs of the year would be a great way to showcase his career. (He doesn’t say it with such confidence.) Fin’s follow-up, Broken Hearts Club, was a broken album, full of songs he had to come out of, almost as therapy. Beard, then, “I feel like the first album where I think about myself, I’m confident about myself” – it is shown by songs like 2 Many Days , which celebrates his success in music, and that most of the productions on this album were directed by Bennett himself.
Born and raised in LA. His mother works as a clerk, his father works as the sales president at Small World Toys, and he and his brother Travis (a member of Odd Future known as Taco) sometimes run a toy company. As a teenager, Bennett became interested in music production, and turned his parents’ guest house into a recording studio. He posts about the studio on MySpace and invites people. When he and Taco became part of Odd Future in 2007, the crew would record in the Bennett family’s studio, vandalizing the walls and breaking the windows.
For the most part, Bennett was seen as Odd Future’s DJ and engineer. The group celebrates their 20th anniversary next year, and they are still friends with many of their colleagues. He spoke to Tyler, the Creator yesterday; he was wondering why he and Steve Lacy, another member of the Internet, were releasing their albums on the same day (Bennett thinks it’s cute, and maybe they’ll have a party together; Tyler thinks albums need their time), but he seems unhappy when he thinks about his time in public.
Odd Future became a real thing – with records and tours and fans – Bennett began to struggle. The days just hanging out in the house “were good, because I felt like we were friends.” In the end, the truth was that we were all working towards the same goal. Once, he recalls, he called a group meeting – “We probably had three meetings as a group, and I called two of them” – to discuss where to record. He said: “I remember saying: ‘You guys can still paint here,’ and one of them said, ‘We’re not friends like that.’
He became very depressed, “which no one else in the group could understand”. Luckily, Matt Martians, a friend of mine on the Internet, was the person who grabbed me and was like: ‘Come on, you’re fine, you’re fine’ … But that’s when we started seeing the sights.” He said: “I was unmedicated, suffering from depression on the streets among people who ignored me, maybe because of their lack of access.” We were young, but to this day, most Odd Future guys don’t like to argue. “
He says he doesn’t take his time in Odd Future for granted, because it made him and his brother succeed, and made their parents proud. In addition, the Internet appeared in Odd Future. “And, you know, Tyler spends every Christmas and Thanksgiving at my house,” she says. “At the end of the day, it’s a beautiful thing.”
When Bennett started making music, he wanted to be a producer, but he didn’t have the confidence. When she was a teenager and became interested in producing, she explains, “she was scared of all the men I was around” – Bennett was the only woman in Odd Future – “and she didn’t show any interest in my production, so I just thought I wasn’t there yet”. Later, he realized that the boys did not want to hear his style, but were only thinking about their own work.
After those Odd Future days — the group went largely inactive for more than a decade, while members like Tyler, the Creator and Frank Ocean became solo artists — Bennett often put production aside. But eventually, after Broken Hearts Club, he started making music for fun. “One day, I looked up and I was getting beaten up a lot, and then the next day I looked up and I didn’t like being beaten up by anyone,” he says. Martians “was the first person to say to me: ‘Yeah, that’s tough, you made that.’ I was like, really? No one has ever said that to me.” He created many beards himself – the first display of his talent – and for that he considers it historic. The production is fun and warm – traditional R&B delivered with a stylish modern touch. “I did three songs on the first album, five songs on the second album, and there are 10 on this one.”
He worked on the song at the North Hollywood studio of R&B great Raphael Saadiq, a producer and writer who has worked on many of the most important pop and R&B records of all time, including D’Angelo’s Voodoo and Beyoncé’s Renaissance. Bennett describes him as “an idol you want to meet… You can talk to him about anything, he talks a lot.” Most of the time I was there, we didn’t work, we just hung out, chatted, watched TV,” he says. “I feel like I can call him a teacher.”
Along with Beard, Bennett has been working on the highly anticipated fifth internet record, the first since 2018’s Hive Mind. Martians live in rural Georgia, and Bennett recently went to film at his lake house; is in the driving seat for this project, in part because Bennett was busy writing Beard’s songs. “It doesn’t sound like my album, which is also intentional,” he says. Something I’ve been thinking about is how they can really separate me from the gang, because I hate people who mess us up.”
At this point, Bennett is completely satisfied – emotionally, spiritually, personally. He said: “I feel proud, and I feel that I have done very well.” Now I feel that I am not chasing anything right now. It’s almost like he’s not bragging or shy – just telling the truth. The only prize he seems to care about is the ability to do things his way.
“I bought my house, and my money is paying off my mortgage and more,” he says. “I’m like, okay! This is my first album and I don’t want anything. I’ve got everything I want.” The inevitable success of the beard? That will just be gray.
Syd Beard’s album is out now via Free Lunch/Warners. He plays Manchester, 31 August, and London, 1 September.
