Roy Woods opened up about his newest album X in an interview with YAMS published on October 14, 2026. The Brampton singer described the project as a return to his early sound, rebuilt with the wisdom, light and pain of a decade in music.
Woods, who is 30, framed the record as a point of completion for longtime listeners. Fans who followed the OVO Sound singer from his earliest projects through his recent run will hear a deliberate reconnection with the moody, late night R and B that first built his name in the Toronto area scene.
A lot of the fans, they feel complete with what I gave with this project. For the last few projects I’ve really been trying to attack a certain vision, and for this one, I wanted to just go back into that earlier, what it felt like listening to Roy in the earlier years, but with new wisdom, light and pain.
The quote captures the balance the album is aiming for. This is not a nostalgia exercise that recreates old songs. It is an artist revisiting his foundation after years of experimenting with direction, and deciding that the foundation itself was the vision worth returning to.
How You Say My Name Opens The Record
X kicks off with How You Say My Name, which Woods and his fans both count as a favourite on the project. The song sets a darker tone, built around a late night phone call and questions about intentions and lessons learned. Woods recites the opening mood in the interview, a lover calling late, a home that no longer feels like home, and the suspicion that the moment is another lesson.
The opener also unlocked the rest of the writing. Woods explained that the record started a creative run he was not fully familiar with before, because he had not made many records that sounded like it. Knowing exactly what he wanted from the song took time, and finishing it gave him the template for the album’s honesty.
An Album About Control And Self Knowledge
Throughout X, the storytelling turns inward. Woods describes looking for himself rather than looking outward for direction, and knowing what he wants and what works. Being more in control of his sound, his direction and his life is, in his words, the main key to this era. That shift from validation to honesty is the album’s real subject, more than any single relationship in the lyrics.
The relationships still matter to the record, because they are where the self knowledge was earned. Woods said the album taught him the kind of lover he is, where his difficult patterns come from, and what his initial trauma responses are. He has needed to slow down and give more to himself, and to consider what it means to be understood for who he is, not only for what he gives.
Songs like Beautiful, For Me and Break Ties carry that theme in different forms. They show an artist refusing to force a feeling or an instinct, and narrating moments of doubt without dressing them up. For a singer whose early work was defined by atmosphere, X adds a layer of direct self examination that his first records only hinted at.
The Toronto Foundation Under The Sound
Woods came up through Brampton and the wider Toronto scene as part of the OVO Sound generation, and his career has always been part of the city’s R and B story. The Toronto area produced a specific sound in the last decade, dark, melodic and built for late nights, and Woods was one of its defining voices. Hearing him return to that sound on X, with ten more years of life behind it, connects the album to a full era of Toronto music.
He also described pushing back against earlier disappointments. He had stepped away from his own creative power after setbacks early in his career, and this album is where he decided not to return to that mentality or let anyone disrupt the frequency he is carrying. That word, frequency, runs through his description of the era, and it reads as both a sound and a state of mind.
Live Band Plans Come Next
The ambition now is to give listeners something they may not know they need, and to make them feel it live. Woods said fans always want what they want until they get it, so the artist’s job is to bring something new. His next step is the stage: he wants to perform with a live band and tour, showing audiences both his calm side and the rock star energy he says lives alongside it.
For Toronto R and B, X is a meaningful checkpoint. A core voice of the city’s defining sound has made the record his longtime fans asked for, on his own terms and under his own control. If the live band tour follows, the album’s second life on stage could be where this era fully lands.
