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Some of the most impassioned vocals on “Mind of Mine,” the solo debut of the One Direction dissident Zayn Malik, come on a modest mid-album interlude called “Flower.” The producer Malay plays a gentle folk-influenced guitar figure, and Mr. Malik exhales deeply atop it and then begins singing with deeply centered but controlled fervor, “Until the flower of this love has blossomed/Until this heart is at peace.” Then, three times, he pleads, “Give me your heart.”

“Flower” is the most plainly besotted song on this album. It is also sung in Urdu, the native language of Mr. Malik’s father. (The lyrics above are a rough translation.)

That Mr. Malik has inserted a 104-second Urdu love song into the middle of his album of sweaty, smooth R&B is a wink and also a feint — a quick, restrained nod to those in the know, who have been following him for years, that he hasn’t forgotten his past as a Muslim R&B-inclined singer trying to operate with dignity in the unforgiving, often choppy waters of pop’s mainstream.

From 2010 to 2015, he was part of the borg that was One Direction, perhaps the first postmodern boy band, but not one so disruptive that it allowed Mr. Malik to breathe. He was the band’s only nonwhite member — his father is of Pakistani descent — and also the one with the most evident interest in breaking loose from the group’s relentless big-tent pop.

“Mind of Mine” (RCA), out on Friday, March 25, shows a singer eager to reclaim the parts of himself that five years in the pop klieg lights forced into the shadows.

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