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Brent Faiyaz: Photos From the Billboard Cover Shoot

Brent Faiyaz: Photos from the Billboard cover shoot.

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. 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 hitmaker in the process.

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