Songs for You

As an honest divah I am going to let you know I am surely not a Tinashe fan. Nonetheless, I give credit where credit is due. Tinashe is owed much respect with this album. The reason we haven’t heard from her in years is due to her label disrespecting her. Tinashe has been a backstage player for a while, writing songs for all of our favorite artists. Tinashe isn't new to this. The singer, songwriter, and producer from Los Angeles grew up performing and creating music in her bedroom, heard on a string of self-released online mixtapes that could be best described as experimental R&B. Her last mixtape Black Water, featured a song with then-unknown rapper Travis Scott, back when the "S" Travis was a dollar sign. It got her signed to RCA Records. At just 21 years old, Tinashe's official major-label debut 2014's Aquarius, produced a top 10 smash in first single "2 On" and saw her collaborating with marquee names ranging from A$AP Rocky to Dev Hynes. Music videos for "2 On", "Feels Like Vegas," and "Cold Sweat" showcased the air sign"s longtime affinity for organic grooves meant for sensual, highly choreographed movement. At the time, no one was quite like Tinashe — a gifted singer with eclectic musical tastes and a knack for impactful dance performances. She has been a performer from the very beginning but her sound is not my steez. She has a very eclectic sound that falls between the lines of R&B and contemporary. Internet culture's voracious appetite for the new and the next — and fan cultures need to pit female artists against one another — found the star caught up in lots of snarky "who is Tinashe?" chatter.

Stints on Dancing with the Stars and FOX's Rent: Live!, the latter of which garnered her an Emmy nomination didn't make the vicious chatter cease. Fans noticed she went dark on social media this past July, not posting for months. One of her last posts reads in part, I've always felt like an underdog... My entire life, I felt like my peers underestimated/misunderstood me, and maybe it's cuz I really don't ever quite fit in. But tbh I don't want to fit in. I can't subscribe to this Hollywood bs. Maybe that's the Aquarius in me, inherently unconventional and anti idk. But fuck it, I couldn't be any way else." She emerged at the end of September with a video addressed to her fans looking refreshed. "I just feel like I needed to go through what I went through to be the person I am today", she says before going on to talk about how the process of putting out personal work subject to vicious criticism can be terrifying. But she squints and looks right into the camera. "But you know what? Fuck the system." And with that being said, stream Songs For You and remember where you heard it first!