Over the past four years, Tinashe, a 23-year-old former child actor turned singer, has been nudging the needle of R&B forward with a handful of moody and distinctive projects. Eschewing the glossy production and gospel-influenced, showboating singing style characteristic of traditional R&B, she wove a cocoon, leaning on woozy, atmospheric beats that nodded to chopped-n-screwed culture. Despite her movie-biz background and, yes, camera-ready face, however, she’s struggled to break through in the music industry. In an interview with xoNecole last year, Tinashe explained why she hadn’t been given much support.
“I think it comes from a place of there is only room for one. Or there is only room for two. … There is a Beyoncé, there is a Rihanna, there is Zendaya, there is a Jourdan Dunn. There is a Black girl in all of these positions and we don’t need another one. It’s just kind of ridiculous because there are like a hundred blonde, white actresses and leading ladies. There are a hundred rappers that all virtually look the same, sound the same, and dress the same and no one cares. But for some reason, when it comes to young women … There can’t be room [for us all]. There can’t be five Black girls winning.”
There is truth to her response, especially in rap. As more and more promising female rappers pop up, from an industry standpoint there’s still Nicki Minaj and everyone else. But Tinashe’s music also has a somewhat reticent, inaccessible air to it, and her lyrics lack stickiness, which make holding the spotlight hard. Despite her best efforts—the choreographed shows, the sexy cover shoots, the collabs with bigger players like Chris Brown and Nick Jonas—and a warm critical reception (Aquarius, her 2014 debut studio album, ranked on many year-end lists, including Pitchfork’s)—she hasn’t quite become a “star.” She scored a mainstream smash with 2014’s “2 On,” but that might have been a fluke, owing more to the ubiquity of DJ Mustard’s club-ready beats and a stronger POV than Tinashe typically employs in her own slippery vision. Clearly, her team wants Tinashe to be a radio artist (see her addition on a new version of Britney’s sharp “Slumber Party”), but she is making much smarter music than “2 On” or “All Hands on Deck.” In fact, if claiming a spot on heavy rotation playlists is the goal, she might be making music that’s too good, as evinced by her latest project, Nightride.
Delays of Joyride, her upcoming sophomore album, and fuzziness over exactly what Nightride is—a mixtape for sale, a companion piece to Joyride?—hint to her team’s confusion of how to market the excellent yet not-easily-defined music she’s creating. For example, “Energy,” the mystical Mike WiLL Made-It track, is one of the best songs of the year and it didn’t even make the cut here.
Album opener “Lucid Dreaming” is a soothing balm, its wooden chimes evoking the calm of savasana. However, Nightride’s first half is heavily weighted with somber ballads, and the first 25 minutes begin to drag, with the exception of the taut “Company,” which skitters and flits. But from that point on, Nightride sounds fascinating and, while polished, less sleek and cold than the title suggests. It has more of an ominous, broken-down carnival vibe. Tinashe is making some very weird music here (she’s not alone in that, of course—Sevyn Streeter, Dawn Richard, Abra, Kelela immediately spring to mind as her peers). The lopsided, one-wheel-falling-off wonk of “Ride of Your Life” gives way to “Party Favors,” an off-kilter banger that inflates and deflates, swelling with and hissing out helium. And really, considering the country is currently on Mr. Trump’s Wild Ride, shouldn’t the music crafted during it swerve left, taking bumpy, pitch-black back roads instead of paved, well-lit streets?
Generally, production here is drizzly and overcast, and work from newcomer Stephen Spencer (his glitchy-yet-sultry slow-burner “Spacetime” is just begging to soundtrack a futuristic sex scene) to vets like Metro Boomin, Boi-1da, and The-Dream (whose winking “Company” is the lone cloudless song on the project) is excellent and cohesive despite there being almost as many producers as there are songs. Obviously they were inspired by the theme—Tinashe has long preferred shadows and slinkiness to bright poppiness, and Nightride is strictly after-hours music. She even trades her standard breathiness for a richer tone to match the deep groove of “Sunburn.” The listener’s only decision is setting—dim club, deserted freeway, darkened bedroom. The music is infinitely interesting, possibly more so than the artist singing it. But then again, you shouldn’t count out anyone releasing an album like Nightride. As she whispers after “Sacrifices,” “I will not be ignored.”
