Masego’s House Burned; the List Became Fix Your Face

In January 2025, when wildfires tore through the Los Angeles area and reached his house, Masego was on the other side of the world. The decision of what a friend could still carry out had to be made over the phone, in minutes, without ever seeing the rooms himself. The list came out short: family photo albums, his grandfather’s vinyl collection, instruments, cufflinks. Everything else — plaques included, Grammy certifications included — he had to make peace with losing.

“Fix your face” is what a mother says when she needs a child to pull itself together and stop crying, right now. For grown-up Masego it became something else — a description of how he meets whatever comes next. That phrase now titles his third studio album, co-produced with Jordan Elgie and released through Capitol Records. Nearly three years in the making, it drew from a pool of more than 150 songs before settling on sixteen.

He also changed how he worked. Instead of his usual freestyle, he began writing ideas down for the first time. Before writing, in his own words, he put himself through a “scholastic level of research” — listening to and studying artists who never flinched from vulnerability: Mary J. Blige, D’Angelo, Labi Siffre, PartyNextDoor. He cut off his long hair, not as a style change but as a mark of openness.

The opener, “Sounds Like,” remembers a teenage dream of playing basketball, ended by an injury, and what took its place on his bedroom walls: “And then my whole room changed / From Kobe to Miles Davis.” At the end of the song, his mother’s voice arrives: “You better fix your face / I know it’s getting tough / Keep your chin up.” On “Breathe,” he sings about losing a family member while a music career keeps demanding he move forward: “Can I breathe? / Can I live? / Can I grieve? / Get a minute?” Its video, his first in over two years, opens on a motionless choir that only starts to move in the final bridge.

His Jamaican side surfaces on “Hello,” featuring Buju Banton, built on a horn line from Mandrill’s “Children of the Sun” that had already traveled once through Shawty Lo’s “Dey Know” before landing here, reframed through a Caribbean lens. Two other generations meet elsewhere on the record: Keyshia Cole on “Someone,” Musiq Soulchild on “Overthinking.” He told Billboard both are artists he is “trying to tap into and be some version of one day.”

The Fix Your Face Tour opens August 4 in Dallas, his first headlining run in nearly three years, with stops at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, Radio City Music Hall in New York, and the O2 in London. A mantra born from one phone call during a fire is now booked into forty cities.