The 2020s File Feature
Wasting Time
Wasting Time: The Making and Chart Rise of Brent Faiyaz's Drake Collaboration "Wasting Time" is a song by Baltimore R&B singer Brent Faiyaz featuring Canadia…
01 The Story
Wasting Time: The Making and Chart Rise of Brent Faiyaz's Drake Collaboration
"Wasting Time" is a song by Baltimore R&B singer Brent Faiyaz featuring Canadian rapper and superstar Drake, released on July 2, 2021, as a standalone single through Lost Kids and Universal Music Group. The track arrived during a period when Faiyaz was transitioning from a cult favorite to a mainstream force, and the collaboration with Drake accelerated that trajectory considerably. Produced by Montreal beatmaker Dpat, the song blends slow-burning soul with contemporary lo-fi R&B textures, leaning into the moody aesthetic that Faiyaz had been refining since his 2017 breakout EP.
The production on "Wasting Time" owes a debt to classic quiet storm and neo-soul sensibilities, layering warm keys, understated bass, and a humid, late-night atmosphere. Dpat, who had already worked with Faiyaz extensively, crafted an instrumental that left space for both vocalists to perform at conversational volume rather than at spectacle. The track is notable for its restraint, which was a deliberate creative choice at a time when many collaborations between rising artists and established headliners tend toward overproduction.
The pairing of Faiyaz and Drake had been discussed in music circles for some time. Faiyaz had built a reputation for emotional directness and vocal intimacy, while Drake had spent years exploring similar muted R&B registers on his own projects. When the song appeared, it felt less like a career opportunity and more like a genuine meeting of like-minded artists, and the critical response reflected that authenticity. Reviewers noted that neither artist overshadowed the other, which was a significant compliment given the commercial weight Drake typically brings to any feature.
"Wasting Time" entered the Billboard Hot 100 shortly after its release and climbed to a peak position of number 26, a strong showing for a song that carried none of the conventional pop-radio hooks typical of chart-climbing singles. The track also performed well on Billboard's R&B and Hip-Hop charts, reinforcing that Faiyaz had secured a cross-genre audience willing to follow him outside the boundaries of pure R&B. It spent multiple weeks on the Hot 100, confirming that streaming audiences had strong affinity for its mellow energy.
Streaming numbers were considerable from the outset. The single accumulated tens of millions of streams on Spotify and Apple Music within its first few weeks, driven in part by Drake's enormous global fanbase and in part by the organic word-of-mouth that had characterized Faiyaz's earlier releases. The song was widely shared on social media platforms, particularly on TikTok, where its smooth, introspective tone made it popular for both relationship-themed content and late-night ambient playlists.
"Wasting Time" also appeared on Drake's Certified Lover Boy, released in September 2021, which gave the track a second wave of exposure when that album became one of the most-streamed releases of the year. That inclusion demonstrated Drake's genuine regard for the collaboration and introduced the song to listeners who may not have discovered it during its original single run. For Faiyaz, the placement was invaluable: being a featured track on one of the year's most commercially dominant albums represented a form of mainstream endorsement that money cannot easily manufacture.
Critically, the song was singled out by multiple publications as one of the standout tracks of the summer of 2021. Music journalists praised the seamless tonal consistency between the two artists and highlighted the production's ability to establish an almost cinematic emotional atmosphere. Several year-end lists for 2021 included the song among the best R&B releases of the calendar year, which helped solidify its reputation beyond the immediate chart moment.
The release also coincided with growing interest in Faiyaz's broader catalog. Listeners drawn in by "Wasting Time" frequently explored his earlier work, contributing to renewed streaming activity for songs from his debut studio album Fuck the World, released in 2020. In this sense, the single functioned both as a standalone moment and as an entry point to a deeper discography. Faiyaz's management and label recognized this and used the song's momentum to position him as a headlining artist capable of drawing audiences to his own projects without needing additional feature support.
The music video, directed with a visual style consistent with Faiyaz's established aesthetic preferences, reinforced the song's nocturnal, intimate themes. It was released shortly after the single and quickly accumulated millions of views on YouTube, adding another dimension to the song's commercial and cultural footprint.
In retrospect, "Wasting Time" stands as a pivotal release in Faiyaz's career, marking the moment when his appeal crossed over from devoted cult following to genuine mainstream recognition. The collaboration demonstrated that his artistic identity was strong enough to hold its own beside one of the most commercially successful artists of the past decade, and it set the stage for the larger commercial ambitions he would pursue in the years that followed.
02 Song Meaning
Wasting Time: Longing, Ambivalence, and the Weight of Romantic Inertia
"Wasting Time" occupies an emotional space that Brent Faiyaz has made distinctly his own: the zone between desire and resignation, where attachment persists even when the rational mind has concluded that a relationship serves no constructive purpose. The song examines what happens when two people remain emotionally tethered despite understanding that the connection is leading nowhere. This is not a narrative of heartbreak or betrayal so much as one of honest self-awareness paired with an inability to act on that awareness.
Faiyaz's vocal performance communicates the ambivalence of the song's central figure with unusual precision. The protagonist acknowledges that the time spent on this particular relationship could reasonably be categorized as wasted, yet there is no urgency to stop. The admission itself becomes a form of intimacy, a shared vulnerability between two people who are complicit in a pleasurable but ultimately circular dynamic. The song's emotional core rests on this paradox: knowing something is unproductive yet returning to it because the feeling is worth something, even if the outcome is not.
Drake's contribution shifts the song's perspective slightly outward. Where Faiyaz tends toward introspective confession, Drake navigates the same emotional territory with a slightly more performative distance, though the content of his verse aligns thematically with the song's governing mood. Together, the two voices create a kind of stereo portrait of masculine emotional complexity, each addressing desire and indecision from a complementary angle. The result is a song that feels unusually candid about the ways that self-aware people can still make choices driven by feeling rather than logic.
The production reinforces the lyrical themes in meaningful ways. The slow tempo and warm, slightly hazy instrumental quality mirror the sensation of time passing without urgency, of drifting through an emotional situation without taking corrective action. The lo-fi elements in the mix, the soft percussion and the understated bass, contribute to a sense of late-night intimacy that suits a song about private, unresolved feelings.
Within Faiyaz's catalog, "Wasting Time" represents a refinement of themes he had explored on earlier projects. His debut work frequently examined desire, loyalty, and the complications of romantic relationships from the perspective of a young man navigating fame and personal life simultaneously. "Wasting Time" strips those themes to their emotional essentials, removing contextual noise and focusing on the pure psychological experience of romantic ambivalence. This compression makes the song feel both personal and universal, accessible to listeners regardless of their specific circumstances.
The song also connects to a broader tradition in R&B of treating emotional inertia as a subject worthy of serious artistic attention. From classic soul music through the quiet storm era and into contemporary neo-soul, the genre has long been interested in the complicated feelings that arise when relationships exist in unresolved states. Faiyaz works clearly within this tradition, but brings a contemporary directness to the subject that distinguishes him from artists who treat similar themes with greater metaphorical distance.
For listeners in 2021, the song resonated partly because its subject matter, the difficulty of ending something that still generates feeling, was relatable across demographic lines. The absence of judgment in the song's emotional register is part of its appeal: neither the narrator nor the listener is asked to condemn the behavior being described. The song simply inhabits the feeling and allows it to exist on its own terms, which is a form of emotional honesty that audiences responded to strongly.
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