Masego steps into a new creative chapter with Fix Your Face, his third studio album, arriving July 17 via EQT Recordings and Capitol. The record — written and recorded across Jamaica, New York and Los Angeles — channels recent personal upheaval and a deliberate turn toward openness, making it one of the more intimate R&B releases this year.
We met in Brooklyn on a bright afternoon: casual, focused and ready to talk about why this album matters now — for Masego personally and for listeners who have followed his improvisational rise since “Tadow.”
Loss, reinvention and the move toward vulnerability
Masego spent a decade in Los Angeles before a January 2025 wildfire destroyed his home while he was abroad. The loss of physical keepsakes — film photos, vinyl, guitars and his grandfather’s cufflinks — reshaped his priorities and, he says, forced a creative reset. He recalls watching the fire from a distance and wrestling with disbelief, then moving through a pragmatic phase before confronting the grief.
The experience left an imprint on the record: songs here often trade bravado for frank emotional work. The artist describes an intentional decision to remove some of the distance he’d kept between his public persona and his inner life, studying vulnerability and trying new ways to communicate with listeners.
How the album came together
What began as a handful of sessions became a vault of roughly 150 tracks. Ultimately Masego and his collaborators distilled that output into a focused 16-track set. For the first stretch of the process he took the creative operation to Jamaica — a deliberate choice that informed both sound and mood — before finishing sessions in New York and Los Angeles.
He also changed his approach in the studio. Known for improvisation — “Tadow” was famously improvised — Masego wrote more deliberately this time and arranged songs to follow a clearer narrative arc. He credits longtime friend and manager Kojo with pushing him to reassess his craft and to dig deeper emotionally.
Fix Your Face was co-produced with Jordan Elgie and includes guest appearances from Leon Thomas, Keyshia Cole, Musiq Soulchild, Buju Banton, Lekan and Foggieraw, reflecting a mix of classic R&B, gospel-tinged soul and global rhythms.
- Release date: July 17, via EQT Recordings / Capitol Records
- Producers: Masego and Jordan Elgie
- Notable guests: Leon Thomas, Keyshia Cole, Musiq Soulchild, Buju Banton
- Sessions: Jamaica, New York, Los Angeles
- Themes: grief, memory, faith, desire, artistic rebirth
From Brazil and soccer to written songs
Before returning to deeper songwriting, Masego spent extended time in Brazil — drawn by the unexpected local love for his 2017 single and by cultural connections he felt through music and community. He credits the country’s communal energy, especially around soccer, with loosening his performance instincts and expanding how he thinks about participation and voice.
Those months abroad also pushed a practical change: for the first time, Masego put pen to paper more often. Moving away from pure freestyle allowed him to shape a more linear personal narrative across the album, beginning with the opener, which revisits formative adolescent moments that redirected his life toward music after a serious childhood injury.
He says this new discipline helped him aim for a different kind of impact on stage: not only hooks that make audiences shout, but verses people will sing back because they feel seen.
Standout tracks and emotional centerpieces
Songs like the flirtatious “Recommend” sit beside franker pieces about infidelity and grief. Masego highlights “Dotted Line,” which channels a hip-hop cadence he admires, as a proud songwriting moment. But it’s the gospel-leaning “Breathe” — a meditation on sorrow and the friction of being productive while grieving — that tested him most emotionally.
“Breathe” began as a private act of therapy, he says, and later became central to the album’s public rollout — a tricky move that required balancing personal exposure with the mechanics of marketing.
Collaborations and musical direction
Masego sought out collaborators who would both challenge and complement his sound. He praises Leon Thomas as a “musician’s musician,” and the album’s guest list spans generations and styles, anchoring the project across R&B, reggae and soul traditions while keeping a contemporary sensibility.
Sequencing was key: the album moves without overstaying its welcome, pairing party-leaning tracks with more reflective moments so the emotional weight lands where it’s meant to.
Fix Your Face also marks a public aesthetic shift: Masego appears in a new look for this era, a visual signal of the personal changes he’s living through and the new arc he’s mapped for himself.
What this means for listeners and the artist
For fans, the record offers an invitation to see a different side of Masego: less guarded, more linear in storytelling and willing to expose hard feelings. For the artist, it’s a rehearsal for a more present, less performative way of being — especially important given his expressed desire for spaces where Black men can share vulnerability without posturing.
He’ll support the album with a 40-date Fix Your Face Tour across North America, Europe and the U.K., a chance to hear how these songs land in front of live audiences and to watch the stage persona he’s reshaped in real time.
Whether listeners come for the grooves, the guests or the emotional honesty, the record stakes a claim as a thoughtful, risk-taking entry in Masego’s catalog — an artist recalibrating his sound after loss and choosing candor over mystique.
