Mind of Mine is a love letter to male pop-R&B from an avowed, observant listener, and the shadows of that genre’s most successful contemporary artists linger over almost every song. He’s fortunate that his true musical interests happen to parallel the sound of pop music in 2016. "I just wasn’t convinced with what we were selling. "If I would sing a hook or a verse slightly R&B, or slightly myself, it would always be recorded 50 times until there was a straight version that was pop, generic as fuck," Zayn told The Fader. This album gave him the opportunity to write and sing however he wanted this album is giving us the opportunity to hear him perform music he’s passionate about for the first time in his career. To hear Zayn tell it, recording Mind of Mine gave him a chance to escape the tyranny of label-dictated boy band pablum. We can dispel the notion there’s anything normal about his life.
He’s dating Gigi Hadid, one of the world’s reigning supermodels, and he’s put her in his music videos. He’s feuded with collaborators and his former bandmates on Twitter he’s slurped orange juice on the cover of The Fader he’s brought a dozen writers into the functioning bar he built in his backyard. Zayn left One Direction just over a year ago, and his stated desire to live like a " normal 22-year-old" outside of the public eye has gone unfulfilled. It’s a lesson you’d do well to carry into the rest of Mind of Mine, an album-length fizzy sports drink desperate to convince you it’s something more dangerous. Zayn’s replenishing his electrolytes and staying hydrated, not mixing narcotics. Could it be some kind of promethazine-codeine cousin? It’s actually closer to British Gatorade. "I’m sippin’ pink Lucozade," he drawls, "and blazin’ on that newfound haze." The phrasing is suggestive, and the substance might be unfamiliar. He’s singing over a veiny, strobing synth - the kind he never could’ve played with as part of the world’s most popular boy band. There’s a telling moment tucked into the plodding second half of Mind of Mine, Zayn Malik’s first major release since leaving One Direction.
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