On March 25, a year to the day after leaving “One Direction” to pursue his solo career, Zayn Malik released his debut album entitled “Mind of Mine.” Honestly, I never thought I would be writing a review on an album released by a former member of a boy band, but I was slightly intrigued when I heard that Malay, who produced Frank Ocean’s exceptional album “Channel Orange,” would also be producing “Mind of Mine.

Zayn’s debut is a bit of a mixed bag — the lyrics aren’t great, but the music isn’t half bad and there are a few nice surprises inserted throughout the record’s 18 tracks. The first of these surprises is the song “INTERMISSION: fLoWer,” a brief two-minute Sufi devotional sung in Urdu, the native language of Pakistan and the ethnicity of Zayn himself. The song is a bold and honest acknowledgment of Zayn’s heritage, a move rarely seen by many American pop stars.

In addition to the album’s influence of R&B and pop musical styles, Zayn also manages to work some of his childhood musical influences into the album. The young pop star grew up listening to soul, funk, reggae and Bollywood music, and elements from these genres are infused ever so delicately into many of the album’s tracks. There is a refreshing amount of real instrumentation on many of the tracks as well, including piano and electric guitar and many of the more bass-heavy techno tracks are seasoned with Asian and Middle Eastern flavor.

The musical genres that Zayn samples from as well as his impressive falsettos are really the highlights on “Mind of Mine.” Unfortunately, as seems to be the custom with modern pop, the quality of Zayn’s lyrics often don’t match the quality of the music. Zayn’s ramblings lack variety and can often be reduced down to ruminations on love, relationships, past mistakes and other introspective clichés that really don’t let us know anything more about him than what other angst-ridden pop stars have already said.

“Mind of Mine” features interesting sonic compositions and a nice smattering of different musical genres and influences that mostly stay far away from generic pop music. I respect the effort. Ultimately though, Zayn and the character that he tries to create for himself are ironically on par with the album’s edgy yet innocent cover photo.