Masego’s ‘Fix Your Face’ Album Proves He’s Ready To Let Us In

Masego isn’t used to being this open and honest. If the 33-year-old singer and multi-instrumentalist had it his way, he’d still be strictly making the feel-good, “vibes music” he’s become known for over the past 10-plus years of his career.

“I’m not the vulnerable type,” he admitted to me. “I like to do the tough guy, Jamaican man thing.”

That’s just how the Kingston-born musician was raised. Growing up in Newport News, Virginia, with his Jamaican father — a military pastor — and mother, Masego vividly remembers hearing some version of the phrase “fix your face” from his parents whenever his emotions threatened to show.

“My father, he would say, ‘Tighten up,’ or ‘Lock in,’ when I would lose a basketball game at like age 8,” the musician recalled to celebrity.land, “and I would still have to dap the team up. That didn’t make sense. I was like, ‘I want to cry. Let me get this cry off,’ and he’s like, ‘Nah, you got to dap them up and act like you don’t care that you just lost.’”

That philosophy never quite sat right with Masego. Yet it became so ingrained in his mind as a kid that he unknowingly taught himself how to suppress his deepest feelings as he got older, both in life and music. For years, the talented virtuoso effortlessly soundtracked being a hopeless romantic on his 2018 debut album “Lady Lady,” the peaks and valleys of relationships on his Grammy-nominated EP “Studying Abroad: Extended Stay” and even his own evolution from street performer to globally acclaimed R&B maestro on his 2023 self-titled album. But even those intimate releases kept Masego’s truest thoughts just out of reach from the public.

“I feel like I didn’t know at the time, but that was me conditioning myself to mask my emotions,” he noted.

It wasn’t until recently that the self-proclaimed private artist took on the tough challenge of digging deep and finally letting the world in. The result is his most introspective work to date, his third studio album “Fix Your Face,” which arrived July 17.

Created in the aftermath of losing his home in Southern California’s 2025 wildfires, a death in the family and more of life’s curveballs, the 16-track LP finds Masego in an entirely different headspace, baring his soul about everything from how a tragic accident in his adolescence changed his ambitions from basketball to music (“Sounds Like…”) to the worst kind of heartache imaginable (“Gone”). Drawing from both formative memories and recent life-changing experiences, the self-revelatory album weaves through grief, heartbreak, infatuation, lust and identity with a level of transparency unlike anything in Masego’s previous work. But as fulfilling as the result of his growth feels, getting there was anything but easy.

“I didn’t like any of this process of being vulnerable publicly,” Masego confessed, noting it was rather “scary” to let the world see this side of him.

“But I think it’s rewarding,” he continued, “because I got nieces and nephews and people that look up to me. So I’m trying to be an example for how you’re supposed to deal with emotions.”

Masego arrives a few minutes late to our afternoon Zoom call, tired but still in good spirits as he basks in the glow of his album’s release. It’s barely been a week since he unleashed the emotional record, yet fans have already been sending the singer their top three favorites.

“I’m using it almost like a personality test,” he said. “I’m like, ‘Oh, you like these three? I know what type of person you are.’”

The past few weeks have been a whirlwind for the artist, who first captivated audiences worldwide with his saxophone-driven “TrapHouse Jazz” sound. Between hopping on planes for shows, juggling music video shoots and a press run to unpack his rebirth era, he’s had to reacquaint himself with the demands of a fast-paced album cycle as he promotes his first full-length project in three years. But the nonstop pace of this chapter pales in comparison to the emotional labor behind the songs that make up “Fix Your Face.”

Fun party tracks like Masego’s latest single “Recommend” — accompanied by a one-man band visual paying homage to one of his influences, jazz legend Herbie Hancock, and a 1976 performance of “Hang Up Your Hang Ups” — fall more naturally within the creative comfort zone he’s built throughout his career. But cuts like “Symone,” where he reflects on a relationship fractured by infidelity, and “Limerence,” where he pours his soul out about being utterly infatuated with his “ride or die,” challenged him to reveal more of himself than ever before.

For an artist who has spent much of his career purposely keeping certain parts of himself tucked away, the payoff of putting his business out on front street now is still something he’s learning to embrace.

“I’m all about rewards,” Masego said. “Like, what’s the reward for letting everybody in your business? What happens afterward? I look at how someone like J. Cole moves, and I’m like, we all know his everything, but does he like that? And so I would just spend time to observe: Was it fun to tell y’all their business?”

Still, he understands that choosing vulnerability over hiding behind bravado and his musical gifts is “a lot better” for his personal journey.

Compared to the rest of “Fix Your Face,” which expertly balances deep revelations with moments of playful levity, the album’s most affecting track is hands-down its lead single “Breathe” — an emotionally charged, gospel-infused confession about grieving a heavy loss while carrying the weight of a successful career.

It’s as close as Masego has gotten to letting the public see him without all the emotional armor he’s worn for so long. And while he’d rather not dwell on the real-life events that inspired the cathartic record, he understands there are listeners who find solace in his honesty.

“I’m happy to do it,” Masego said, even as he still wrestles with the idea that it’s “kind of ridiculous to perform pain.”

“I gotta go on tour and just sing about it,” he said. “It’s strange.

“At the end of the day, with ‘Breathe,’ I think the reason I was convinced to make it the single to come out with it, talk about it every day, is because my family and a lot of my friends were telling me how my specific story was so relatable to them,” he explained. “And when I get in all my little grumpy moods, if I see a certain DM and I’m seeing a paragraph of what my music is doing for somebody, I’m like, all right, you got it. It’s worth the trouble.”

He added, “If I’m a man for real, I’ma just have to deal with it.”

Bringing “Fix Your Face” to life became a collaborative effort across all fronts for Masego. He joined forces with co-producer Jordan Elgie to share creative responsibilities across the project, which features the voice of his mother as well as “a lot of women that I respect.”

“Some of my best friends are on the album giving me some words of encouragement,” Masego said. “It’s like all the people that are allowing me to express myself.”

He also worked closely with his team to shape the visual identity behind the album’s title and its striking artwork. “It comes with being in a room full of a bunch of smart people, and we say, ‘How do we work just as much with the visuals as we did with the music?’” Masego said, explaining how the latter came together.

But what planted the seed for “Fix Your Face” itself was Masego’s desire to create an album that could “give a stage to the emotions that never got a chance to be out.”

Until now, Masego had neither the desire nor the tools to even know how to fully channel that level of sincerity into his songwriting, which was never “weak,” he notes, but “I’ve just never focused on trying to get people to appreciate it.”

To embrace a more unfiltered approach on the album, he looked to greats who had long mastered the art of vulnerability, such as Amy Winehouse, Mary J. Blige, fellow Virginia native D’Angelo and even contemporaries like PartyNextDoor and SZA. He also got assistance from fellow R&B heavyweights known for their own soul-baring lyrics, including featured artists Leon Thomas, Keyshia Cole, Musiq Soulchild and Lekan. Jamaica’s own Buju Banton and DMV rapper Foggieraw — symbolic of the places that helped shape Masego — also appear on the album in what feels like a creative homecoming of sorts.

“I like to be friends with people I work with,” Masego said of those featured on the album. “That’s what I try to get at because, in the beginning, I’m only working with my friends. So it’s beautiful that I played basketball with Lekan. And me and Musiq Soulchild have joked on each other more than we’ve made music. Keyshia Cole and I were riding bikes before we [recorded together].”

“It’s just like, human activity versus transactional, ‘Give me the feature,’” he added. “So I’m happy that I was able to do that with all these features; all these people I know [personally].”

Masego recorded roughly 150 songs while creating “Fix Your Face,” ultimately trimming the tracklist to a fraction of that in service of the story he wanted to tell. Crafting a concept album that balanced his impressive musicianship with a newfound emotional openness reaffirmed why he fell in love with cohesive bodies of work in the first place.

“I love albums. I love skits. I listen to full albums always; not mine, but just anyone’s,” he said. “I think [music] deserves that respect.”

The sheer volume of tracks he composed for his latest offering speaks to the creative outpouring that came of the singer’s album process, which unfolded across multiple sessions in Jamaica, New York and Los Angeles before coming full circle back where it all began. The work to craft it, though, started before Masego ever stepped back into the studio.

According to the singer, part of what pushed him toward this vulnerable space at this point in his career was “conversations with people I respect who challenge me,” who also encouraged him to confront a side of himself he had yet to reveal to the world.

“If I claim to want these goals, then [it’s about] being held to get to those goals by any means,” Masego noted. “It’s like, you not finna go over here unless you open up a little bit more.”

The other part of his motivation came from a slightly more self-serving place, in wanting to create songs that connect with fans beyond a catchy hook (like the effect he still sees from his astronomical, FKJ-assisted 2017 smash “Tadow”).

“There’s a specific image I’ve always wanted, where it’s like everyone in the crowd is singing the verse and they got their phone up or whatever, and they’re excited about the lyricism versus just me being a great performer,” Masego shared of the vision in his head. Reflecting on genres like jazz, he added, “When it comes to melody taking the front seat, what you’re saying takes the back seat.”

“I wanted to make a body of work that could get me to that because I’ve already accomplished the wave your hands and all the things that I can do at a show,” he continued. “But connecting with the pen was something that I’ve always wanted to accomplish.”

To truly get there, though, Masego needed to make some changes beyond the music itself.

The three years since his last major release have been transformative. Beyond learning how to be a healthier version of himself, rather than the “workaholic type” artist he’s been in the past — he’s been more intentional about working muscles in the gym rather than just the studio — he’s also shed some of the traits that once defined the (formerly) skinny saxophone player with the wild hair fans first fell in love with.

The most obvious change lately? His fresh low cut.

“Yeah, I was really reluctant to do it,” Masego said of cutting off his hair, also pointing to a bag that still holds it in his room. “But also, I have to be about what I say. So when I’m in a new season or arc, I gotta do something to not turn back from the old me. It’s gotta be super dramatic and anime. That’s just how I gotta move.”

That outward transformation mirrors the inner work Masego has quietly committed to over the past decade, much of it documented through a journaling habit that has become a cornerstone of his personal growth.

“It’s a nice array of things I’m talking about,” he said of his entries. “Because it’s identity, it’s grief, it’s some of my introspective thoughts, it’s relationships, it’s love. But I feel like all that is just things you experience in life.”

Looking back, those journals have become more than just a place to process his emotions. They’ve also become a way to measure how far he’s come in life, both personally and professionally, much like his new album.

That introspection finds its clearest musical expression on “Fix Your Face” via the closing track, “Charlie Brown,” a mellow, string-laden meditation on the “fake love” that has accompanied Masego’s success. Surprisingly, it was also the most difficult song for him to write.

“‘Charlie Brown’ is saying that I feel like I’m too smart for my own good now, so I’m trying to dumb it back down and be kind of delusional to it all,” he explained, reflecting on the fleeting attention he’s received at times.

“Case in point: When I do anything and post about it, everybody is reminded to text me back, and now everybody loves me. And usually I’m just like, ‘Hey!’ But now I’m just like, ‘Come on, G, this is just some noise,’” Masego continued. “But I feel like I’d rather fall for it, though. I’d rather just be delusional about the fact that, ’Oh, you love me.’ I’m clocking it basically, where it’s like on ‘Charlie Brown,’ I said I know when this inevitably succeeds, everybody’s gonna be hitting my line, and they don’t even know how it comes across. It’s me just being too above it all, viewing it as it goes.”

He added: “[The song] is just me trying to say, look, I’m hip to the fact that it’s fake noise; it’s all this attention, and it’s just for now. But then if I stop making music, it’s, ‘All right, he fell off,’ and all these mean things. So I’m just gonna be present in it.”

Another sign of growth: When I ask whether he feels like a different person today, after going through so many changes and seasons of self-reflection, he replied, “I would say so.”

“I do this thing where I write myself a letter to the future me, and it emails me a year later. So I get to see in words what I was on, how I was feeling, how I was speaking, who was in my life, and just reading the story of me is like, ‘Oh yeah, I’m not even on that anymore. I’m not even thinking like that anymore,’” he said.

“It’s cool to see,” he added, “so I can also hold myself accountable if I’m still on Instagram for two hours and just certain habits I need to kick.”

Stepping into this new creative territory has been an eye-opening experience for the artist. And while fans may not see another project as raw and revealing as “Fix Your Face” down the line (perhaps some potential loosies from the wealth of material recorded during the sessions), Masego is confident that he’s laid the groundwork for the many chapters still ahead.

Up next, Masego is preparing to take “Fix Your Face” on a 40-date international tour spanning North America, Europe and the U.K., launching at the top of August. The singer jokes that he’s been preparing to bring such a personal record to the stage by doing “push-ups with a weight on my heart,” though he’s also been studying some of his favorite throwbacks, including “The Jamie Foxx Show” and performances from fellow R&B star Tank.

“Just seeing things I like, and then deciding, OK, ‘What is my intention? What do I want them to leave with?’” he said of the upcoming tour. “Just making sure I can get all my moments off and practicing. You can’t see the crib, but it’s instruments everywhere.”

Masego is also expanding his creative footprint beyond the music industry, becoming the first Black composer to score an anime theatrical film with the forthcoming fantasy feature “Mfinda” — a natural extension of his longtime love of anime and his new interest in hobbies of filmmaking (hence, the mini documentary he directed for the album) and photography.

“I think it’s cool to know other people’s jobs to see if they’re doing it right,” Masego said of learning the ropes in a new arena. “Like, on the music videos, now I’m like, ’Give me the camera.”

“I want to interact with what’s going on around me,” he added. “I want to know everyone’s perspective, and I think in all my little hobbies, I like to see what’s going on. I don’t want to just have things happening to me. And I love photography. I love film. I love all that. Having hobbies outside of being famous, it’s healthy.”

As he navigates this new chapter of his life, Masego is hopeful that his willingness to be open on “Fix Your Face” will help create space for others — especially Black men and his fellow R&B artists — to express themselves with the same honesty and freedom.

“Yeah, join me, R&B Black men. Let’s all cry together,” Masego joked.

But on a serious note, “I feel like we need more balance,” he pointed out. “I think we’re all out of balance. Everybody’s too cool for school. So I’m just like, show who you are, and then we can go back to being cool.”

“I love being cool,” the singer added, “but I feel like if more men just tell who they are, how they don’t know how to talk to women, and then they figure it out a little bit … I would love to see more of that, and it would balance out the game. Then we can get back to the flex records.”