Zayn Malik Speaks Out in Revealing Billboard Cover Story: ‘I’m Not Censoring Myself Anymore

Zayn Malik is standing in a dimly lit studio, spliff hanging from his lips and whiskey tumbler in hand.

“My fans are giving me shit every day,” he says. “Like, ‘Where the f— is your music? You’ve been at it for months. Give us something.’ ” It’s around 9 p.m. the Monday after Thanksgiving, and the 22-year-old is indeed about to give up something, though not to his adoring public — they’ll have to wait for a solo album due early this spring on RCA. The four others here at Los Angeles’ Record Plant are part of Malik’s team, and even they seem surprised at how little the slinky, propulsive music he plays has to do with anything recorded by One Direction, the band he abruptly left eight months ago, setting off a convulsion of online lament including accusations of treason and upsetting hashtags like #CuttingForZayn. In fact, the beat of shadowy, au courant R&B track “She” drives so hard that Malik, grooving intensely, sloshes liquor onto his arm. He quickly grabs a tissue and self-consciously dabs his wrist.

If Malik’s goal in leaving One Direction was to escape the kind of superfame attainable only by boy bands with obsessed, social media-armed admirers, he has failed. From the moment he quit — Wednesday, March 25, 2015 at 6:30 a.m. ET — the singer pegged as the group’s quiet and mysterious one saw his every move dissected across countless platforms. The most retweeted message of 2015? Bandmate Harry Styles wishing him “love” when Malik announced his exit. The second? Malik calling the first 1D song without him “sick” (in a good way).

To devotees of 1D — which by March had sold 6.5 million albums in the United States (according to Nielsen Music), amassed 224 million YouTube views and, on its 2014 tour, grossed $290 million (according to Billboard Boxscore) — the only thing more fascinating than the boys are their relationships to one another. (A small library’s worth of soft- and hardcore fan fiction attests to that.) It’s a bond that Malik himself can’t break, although he gently distances himself from his former colleagues — and less gently, their music. “I genuinely enjoyed [the band] and did whatever I could to be myself within that, but it’s just not where I sit as a musician,” he says. “The other boys’ taste was generally indie rock. It’s good music, but I don’t f— with it. That was never cool where I was from.”

In 1D, Malik was known as the “Bradford Bad Boy” for his working-class hometown. And indeed, there’s little outwardly posh or precious about him. You can hear the North of England in his speech, where “other boys” becomes “uvah boyce.” His hair juts off of his head at a near-perfect 45 degrees, but since going solo he has shaved it once and changed the color five times (it’s gray today). Tattoos pour from his snug black tee, which, like his tight blue jeans and matte black boots, bears no logos. No amount of ink, hair dye or facial scruff — today, he’s what you might call inadvertently bearded — can obscure the glow of his innate gorgeousness.