Wasteland (stylized in all caps) is the second studio album by American R&B singer Brent Faiyaz, released on July 8, 2022, through Lost Kids, Venice Music, and Stem Disintermedia.

[4] Wasteland received "generally favorable" reviews from music critics who praised the album's "smooth" production and Faiyaz's vocals.

Faiyaz revealed that the album's lead single, "Dead Man Walking" was inspired by the murder of George Floyd, noting that he "built the record around [the song]" and that he "spent maybe that whole two years making that project" from 2020 to 2022.

With the majority of the album being recorded during and post the COVID-19 pandemic, Faiyaz revealed that "Wasteland is very much this post-pandemic space of confusion and loss, and I guess reckless abandonment" while noting that because "everybody was in the space where we lost somebody during COVID", the album's title refers to what he thought America was and "what this world we're living in was", at the time.

[9] However, due to Faiyaz's rising to prominence during the pandemic, he believed that the term "wasteland" would serve as a reflection on his "view or [his] idea of what [he] thought fame was going to look like, or what it was going be".

Wasteland is my favorite project so far and I really created this one for the homies, so we could all listen and play it together.On September 18, 2020, Faiyaz released the album's lead single, "Dead Man Walking".

The video, shot in black-and-white, also features American Olympic gymnast Nastasya Generalova as another audience member and was directed by Lone Wolf and Mark Peaced.

[26] Per Stereogum's Tom Breihan, the album's "clear focal point is Faiyaz, who sings so beautifully about ugly situations", with interlude sketches which Breihan compares to Kendrick Lamar's "We Cry Together", saying that they contain "Faiyaz and his baby's mother argu[ing] about their relationship, and things get[ting] intense enough to put all of the album's seduction-talk into a bracing and self-destructive new context.

"[27] Complex's Joe Price called the album "an expansive effort that sees Faiyaz at his most confident" where "atop nocturnal, sparse production, he flaunts his smooth vocals and penchant for effortless hooks" and even "finds time to experiment, including on "Ghetto Gatsby", which features almost no percussion.

"[1] The Guardian's Tara Joshi wrote that "Although Faiyaz already has a dedicated fanbase, this assured, sensual and ambitious record looks likely to bring him to an ever-wider audience.

"[33] Dani Blum of Pitchfork felt that Faiyaz's "lovely vocals and intriguing ideas" are lost "underneath blockbuster features and irritating interludes."

The album is "cinematic in the most clunkily literal sense", with three skits and a "two-and-half-minute-long ramble" of an introduction which "culminates in an intriguing, if not obvious question: 'What purpose do your vices serve in your life?

Compared to "clear influence[s]" Drake and The Weeknd, who both "ground [their] aching melodrama in tangible grit, sculpting scenes out of specifics", Faiyaz "mainly opts for sweeping statements about how evil he is, a rigid moral clarity that sometimes comes across as laziness" with any detail only acting to "further fuel the caricature.

"[32] Wasteland debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 chart, earning 88,000 album-equivalent units (including 6,000 copies in pure album sales) in its first week.