Posted by Brent Faiyaz made his long-awaited return to the music scene with his studio album Wasteland, which dropped on July 8. Fans who were waiting to hear the singer’s high-level toxicity couldn’t stop talking about the album on social media, and many were expecting it to debut atop the Billboard 200, but things didn’t go as planned.
According to a report from Billboard, Wasteland debuted at No. 2 on the 200 chart after moving 88,000 album-equivalent units. Faiyaz was unable to top Latin music superstar Bad Bunny, who retook the No. 1 spot with his album Un Verano Sin Ti moving an insane 105,000 copies.
Billboard 200: #2(new) @brentfaiyaz, WASTELAND 88,000 [107.48 million on-demand streams | 6,000 pure sales].
— chart data (@chartdata) July 17, 2022
Brent Faiyaz still has reason to celebrate, though, as Wasteland got him the highest charting position of his career. His 2020 effort, Fuck the World, debuted at No. 20 on the Billboard 200.
Wasteland has guest features from Drake, Alicia Keys, Tyler, the Creator and more. The Maryland native recently spoke to Vogue about different films that served as inspiration for Wasteland, including movies from Quentin Tarantino.
“It was less of an album process and more of a life process,” he began. “I just made a collection of songs and tied a story line together once I saw that they all kind of shared a similar theme. I didn’t really realize I was working on an album until I was maybe a little over halfway through. Then I realized, wait a minute, this is a body of work.”
Brent Faiyaz’s ‘Wasteland’ Projected To Make Billboard 200 History
“I was watching a lot of Tarantino films. I was watching Jackie Brown over and over again. I was also watching Vanilla Sky on repeat. I pulled a lot from that. But mostly I was inspired by the different people that I locked in with, from The Dream to Alicia Keys. I was just soaking up game from artists like Raphael Saadiq and No I.D., who have been doing this longer than I have.”
Check out the album below.