The independent community has never been as diverse, or as vibrant, as it is in 2024, as artists, labels and distributors have more options — and more challenges — than ever before. But for many in this business, that just means there are more opportunities than ever, too. From long-established companies that have adapted and thrived to new upstarts made for this moment, the spirited, free-thinking world of indie music is leading the industry into a novel era of creativity, ingenuity — and success.

BIG DEAL
With his relentless creative vision, work ethic and entrepreneurial instincts, Brent Faiyaz ascended the charts, scored a lucrative partnership with UnitedMasters — and became one of today’s most successful independent artists.

AT JUST 10 YEARS old, Christopher Brent Wood’s metamorphosis into indie disruptor Brent Faiyaz began. As he collected CDs by D’Angelo, Lauryn Hill and Joe, among other R&B/hip-hop artists, the youngster would steadily pore over album liner notes, absorbing the behind-the-scenes details of how his favorite albums were made. By middle school, he had set up his first home studio, with a USB mic and downloaded software — the start of his shift from music fan to music-maker.
“I was making money selling beats; that’s how I got a lot of my friends when I was younger,” Faiyaz, 28, recalls today of his teenage years in the Baltimore area. “It’d be like grown motherfuckers coming to the house to get beats off me. My parents were like, ‘Who are these grown adults coming by the house? What’s going on?’ ”
Faiyaz’s parents had once pushed him to attend college. But eventually, that morphed into, “Can you just please graduate [high school]?” Faiyaz recalls with a chuckle, “because my grades were so bad. It was like you can do something all day every day, but if it’s not bringing no money to the house, they figured you needed a plan B or C. But music was all I wanted to do. So I kind of had to prove them wrong.”
Faiyaz has done just that. Since he began releasing his own music on SoundCloud over a decade ago, he has upended the contemporary R&B scene with his raw, frank lyrics and ’90s-vibed alt-R&B sound — and become a bona fide mainstream hit-maker in the process. After gaining national attention with his guest turn (alongside Shy Glizzy) on GoldLink’s multiplatinum hit “Crew,” Faiyaz dropped his debut studio album, Sonder Son, in 2017. His loyal fan base continued to grow, and he broke through on the Billboard 200 in 2020 with his EP Fuck the World, which bowed at No. 20; two years later, his second studio album, Wasteland, debuted at No. 2 on the chart, powered by the platinum singles “Gravity” (with Tyler, The Creator) and “Wasting Time” (with Drake and The Neptunes). Faiyaz has earned 4.7 million equivalent album units in the United States and 6.5 billion official on-demand U.S. streams for songs on which he’s the lead artist, according to Luminate, and he has charted 13 songs on the Billboard Hot 100, 20 on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and 33 on Hot R&B Songs.

“IT KILLS ME WHEN LABELS SIGN AN ARTIST KNOWING WHO THAT ARTIST IS CREATIVELY, BUT THEN THEY TRY TO DICTATE THEIR MUSIC AND OTHER THINGS. NOTHING IS GOING TO STIFLE YOUR CREATIVITY MORE THAN HAVING TO SAY YES TO SOME LAME SHIT THAT YOU DON’T WANT TO DO OR BEING TOLD NO TO SOME REALLY COOL SHIT THAT YOU WANT TO DO.”
—FAIYAZ

Meanwhile, Faiyaz’s unwavering work ethic, creative visual flair and keen entrepreneurial instincts have helped him craft one of independent music’s biggest recent success stories. In 2015, he and his manager, Ty Baisden, co-founded the label Lost Kids, which released Fuck the World and Wasteland, and their success caught the attention of music distributor UnitedMasters and its founder and CEO, Steve Stoute. The company partnered with Faiyaz in 2023 to launch creative agency ISO Supremacy, and Faiyaz’s first ISO album, Larger Than Life, arrived that October, reaching No. 11 on the Billboard 200. The same year, he embarked on his F*ck the World, It’s a Wasteland world tour, playing theaters and grossing $5.3 million over 18 shows, according to Billboard Boxscore.
“A lot of it was timing,” the soft-spoken Faiyaz reflects today over his lunch of Mongolian lamb at a tony Beverly Hills restaurant. “I was fortunate enough to be in a space where I had the mainstream hit record with ‘Crew,’ and then I also had the underground shit. So I was able to tackle the super music heads and the mainstream audience all at one time. By the time Wasteland dropped, it was just perfect timing.”
Of course, for him to take advantage of such perfect timing, he had to put in the work first. After graduating from high school in 2013, Faiyaz (whose stage surname means “artistic leader” in Arabic and was inspired by a close high school friend who’s Muslim) relocated to Charlotte, N.C. While he worked jobs at a grocery store and Dunkin’, Faiyaz continued to record and upload music on SoundCloud for his budding fan base. That’s where his kindred indie spirit — and eventual manager and business partner — Baisden discovered him. But it was Faiyaz’s singing, not his rapping, that intrigued Baisden.
“I clicked on a song called ‘Natural Release,’ ” says Baisden, who broke into the business as a manager in 2008 before co-founding multisector firm COLTURE in 2018. “It was the only song that Brent was singing and had more plays than all the other songs. While it gave me a whole wave like Frank Ocean, the way Brent’s tone felt made it his own world. I was like, ‘Man, this is fire,’ because he raps how he talks but he doesn’t sing how he talks. It’s a completely different audio experience.”
But despite his love of R&B, Faiyaz didn’t initially see himself as “built for R&B singing. I wasn’t really a take-my-shirt-off-and-show-my-abs kind of guy [onstage], so I didn’t think I was suited for it. And Ty said, ‘That doesn’t necessarily have to be what you do.’ So I just took the things that I would have been rapping about and put it in a way where I could sing it.”
Baisden flew to Charlotte to meet Faiyaz, and the pair ultimately joined forces as founding partners in Lost Kids, named for Faiyaz’s high school crew; he has the letters tattooed on his knuckles. “The whole ideology of Lost Kids came from [Brent],” Baisden says. He handles everything related to Faiyaz’s business; Faiyaz maintains control over all creative aspects of his career. (“He isn’t in the studio with me; he isn’t picking my singles,” he says of Baisden.) As 50/50 partners in Lost Kids, Baisden and Faiyaz have — beyond music and publishing — also invested in startup companies, real estate and the Show You Off grant program, which supports Black women entrepreneurs. In a full-circle moment, Faiyaz’s mother, Jeanette, is also involved in Lost Kids’ philanthropic efforts.
“If we hadn’t met each other,” Faiyaz says of Baisden, “we would both definitely still be successful in our respective lanes because we’re both so driven and focused with similar visions. We’re learning from each other, but we didn’t go into this trying to do each other’s jobs. That’s what makes our alliance so special.”