THE INTERNET CONFIRMS NEW ALBUM AFTER EIGHT YEARS APART

Syd, Steve Lacy, and Matt Martians sat down together for the New York Times' Popcast on July 16, 2026, their first joint interview since 2018. Three members of The Internet, in one room, confirming what fans had been asking since Hive Mind: a new album is actually coming.

"We've been working on it, on and off, for four or five years," Martians told the podcast. "We've just been in and out of the studio and it just built to this moment."

Four Or Five Years, Built Around Samples

The gap was not silence. It was three separate careers running in parallel, then circling back into the same room. Martians has reportedly been building the new material around heavy sampling, a return to the crate digging that shaped the group's earliest records, according to reporting on the same Popcast episode. Coverage of that interview pegged a release window in early 2027, pushed back by the members' individual touring schedules.

The pandemic stretched the sessions further than anyone planned, scattering studio time across years instead of months. Lacy has not been idle either. His 2022 album Gemini Rights won the Grammy for Best Progressive R&B Album, and its single Bad Habit topped the Billboard Hot 100. Syd released two solo albums of her own since Hive Mind, Fin in 2017 and Broken Hearts Club in 2022, before this month's Beard.

Steve Lacy And Syd Dropped Solo Albums The Same Day

Lacy released his third solo album, Oh Yeah?, on July 17, 2026, on RCA, one day after the Popcast episode aired. The ten track project features SZA on "is it cool?" and Erykah Badu on "Pure Colour," alongside Cecile Believe.

Syd's Beard landed the same day through Free Lunch and Warner Records, her first solo album in four years. The 12 track LP pulls in Rodney Jerkins, Raphael Saadiq, James Fauntleroy, Big Sean, Van Hunt, and Jordan Ward. SZA's feature run keeps compounding this month; she also turns up on Dahi's upcoming Black Boy Alternative, due August 28.

"She Had Fun. I Love That For Her."

Syd also detailed how she helped write "Plastic Off the Sofa" for Beyoncé's 2022 album Renaissance, a song that won the Grammy for Best Traditional R&B Performance in 2023. The version Beyoncé recorded, Syd said, barely resembled the demo that reached Parkwood Entertainment.

"The drums are different. And Beyoncé went crazy on the vocals. All the runs she did were not on the demo," Syd said, recalling being invited to the mixing engineer's house to hear the finished take. "Did she have fun? Like, it sounds like she had fun. I love that for her, and me."

Renaissance turned into a tour built as much on chrome bodysuits and disco cowboy styling as on songs like this one, proof a single studio demo can end up funding an entire visual era two years later.

Hive Mind Came Out In 2018. The Gap Has Been Real.

The Internet last released a full album, Hive Mind, on July 20, 2018, through Columbia Records, credited to all five members: Syd, Matt Martians, Steve Lacy, Patrick Paige II, and Christopher Smith. The group's earlier album, Ego Death, earned a Grammy nomination for Best Urban Contemporary Album in 2016. Hive Mind never matched that nomination, but it still debuted in the top ten of Billboard's R&B and hip hop albums chart and the top half of the all genre Billboard 200.

Solo careers pulled the group in different directions for nearly eight years before this week's reunion interview. A finished record is not guaranteed before 2027. Syd's Beard Tour opens August 29 in London, and the members' individual schedules have already stretched the album twice. Lacy and Syd's albums landed in the same week as Gracie Abrams' Daughter From Hell, a reminder of how stacked the midyear release calendar got before either Internet member said a word about a group project.

Oh Yeah? and Beard both arrived to strong reviews on the same day, which says more about the group's next move than any podcast quote could. If Martians keeps building the fifth Internet album around sample crates the way he says he is, it will land less like a comeback and more like four songwriters finally catching up to each other on record.