Tinashe’s Pop Girl Trajectory Is a Testament to Investing In Yourself
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Tinashe may be looking for somebody to match her freak, but as it turns out, nobody does it quite like the singer herself. With her latest album, Quantum Baby, she’s proving that the path to success starts with trusting and investing in your own worth.
Few have had a career as extensive as the 31-year-old, who was born Tinashe Kachingwe. Her family moved from Illinois to L.A. when she was 8-years-old so she could pursue acting. She had a stint in the girl group The Stunners, and by 2012, she was signed with RCA as a solo artist. After the 2014 release of her debut album, Aquarius, and the breakout single “2 On,” fans recognized her star power. (The song became her first Hot 100 hit.) But, while she toured with mainstream acts (Nicki Minaj, Katy Perry) and collaborated with superstars (like her last Hot 100 entry, 2016’s “Slumber Party” with Britney Spears), it seemed she was being treated as more of a supporting act and not the artistic force she is. (Fans alleged that her label was mishandling her career and not giving her enough creative freedom.)
In 2019, Tinashe left RCA, saying she felt like her “career was coasting.” She noted feeling “frustrated and helpless” after seeing her records delayed and felt pressured to make radio hits. She also opened up about the limitations of being labeled an “R&B girl,” which is far too often a lazy catch-all title that the industry gives Black female artists who are fully capable of being pop stars. In the years since Tinashe has also openly criticized how she was forced to work on music with abusers like R. Kelly and Chris Brown.
So when she assembled a new team and released her first independent record Songs For You in 2019, it was like “a weight was lifted off [her] shoulders,” she told Billboard at the time. In it, she moves from glitzy takes on trap to dream-pop slow jams, making it clear her breadth had been there all along. It was a critical success—the first of many to follow as an independent artist, with 333 following in 2021 and BB/ANG3L in 2023—but it didn’t give her the breakthrough chart-topping moment yet.
But Tinashe has continued to feel even more fully realized as an artist in the years since. She’s tapped into her skills as a producer, mixer, and engineer, and she recently found a unique lane in collaborating with electronic record producers (Machinedrum and Vladislav Delay), giving her sound a stylish edge and illustrating that she was never solely R&B to begin with. She’s also creative directed, making her one of the few pop acts committed to dance videos and doing tight choreography nonstop in her live shows.
She’s proven time and time again that she’ll stop at nothing to make her music. In a recent interview with The Cut, the recording artist revealed just how committed she is to using her own resources to do so. “If I have only $10,000 in my bank account, and I need to spend that on a project, I’m gonna spend it,” she told the outlet. She wasn’t exaggerating when she sings, “I been working all week, yeah yeah / I been doin’ OT,” on her latest, dizzying bop “Getting No Sleep.”
In many ways, she’s been “doin’ OT” for the past five years to consistently release the kind of eclectic genre-defying pop she’d been itching to do all along. This year, the investment in herself paid off with “Nasty.” The single went viral two months after its April release when it was dubbed over a widely-shared TikTok of a white boy who’s got the sauce swiveling his hips with his dance instructor. The lyrics became a meme of their own—but fans also caught on to just how seductive the song’s icy production is, propelling it beyond X posts and social media snippets and onto the Billboard Hot 100.
Since then, Tinashe has been focused on capitalizing (and reveling) in the moment she’s having. (She joked to TMZ that her ex-label must have been “gagging” once “Nasty” began to chart.) She played Coachella (shockingly, for the first time) to coincide with the release of the single, and once the track took off, she got in on the joke by posting a TikTok mimicking the original viral clip. She also launched a line of merch and released a Match My Freak remix EP. And to top it all off, she’s been performing all summer, from playing various Pride events to DJ-ing at electronic scene staple The Lot Radio in N.Y.C. (taking a tip from Charli XCX and her Brat rollout).
It’s all culminated in the release of Quantum Baby, the second half of her 2023 LP BB/Ang3l, on August 16 (via Tinashe Music Inc. and Nice Life Recording Company) amid what could be described as the peak of her career. She recently told The Cut that she’s not much concerned with mainstream success. But as the triumph of “Nasty” has shown, she’s more than equipped for it—as long as it’s on her terms.
Since going independent, Tinashe’s vision has never faltered. She’s stayed true to what she’s always known about her artistry, and in doing so has carved a path for others to follow a similar major-label-to-independent journey (like Chappell Roan and Megan Thee Stallion).
It’s no wonder her new project is called Quantum Baby. Each step, no matter how small, has led Tinashe to where she is now—and she knows that an artist’s trajectory is a sum of their parts.
