Album Review: Tinashe - Songs For You
Tinashe uses the brilliant, independently-released Songs For You to prove to the world that she’s a revolutionary producer, lyricist, vocalist, and everything in between.
While signed to RCA Records, Tinashe released three full-length albums. Her third studio album Joyride, released on April 13, 2018, was surrounded by delays in production and multiple single releases of songs that didn’t even end up on the final project. Less than a year after Joyride’s release, Tinashe announced that she would be splitting from RCA and producing music independently. Her first full-length record since that split, Songs For You, solidifies that she couldn’t have made a better decision. No stranger to releasing her music herself (even while signed to RCA, she released four independently-produced mixtapes), Songs For You is the strongest showcase of her talent and innovation to date.
On the record’s first track ‘Feelings,’ Tinashe sets the tone for the project — she wastes no time singing over a deep beat and introducing a taste of her rap skills in the verses. The spacy outro of the song with heavenly layered vocals betrays the standard club energy of the rest of the song, a tactic that reoccurs throughout the rest of the album. But by ‘Hopscotch,’ Tinashe’s back to a trap beat and her signature sing-speaking over a repeating melody. Towards the end of the song, she delves back into masterful rap delivery.
Songs For You contains a few pop-inspired songs, including ‘Stormy Weather,’ ‘Save Room For Us,’ and ‘Perfect Crime,’ that are key testaments to Tinashe’s innovative melding of genres. While more potentially radio-friendly than other more uniquely-constructed tracks on the album, they are not any less enjoyable. They’re more likely to get stuck in your head and make you play them over and over again, but still very emblematic of Tinashe’s creative vision. Often conveying an endless, psychedelic vibe, they’re reminiscent of older songs in her repertoire, like ‘No Drama’ and ‘Company,’ without feeling like anything you’ve ever heard before.
The highlights of the album, and arguably some of Tinashe’s best work to date, are ‘Die a Little Bit,’ with rising star rapper Ms. Banks, and ‘So Much Better,’ which features G-Eazy (who can’t ruin the track no matter how hard he tries). ‘Die a Little Bit’ takes every possible risk and executes them all perfectly — it starts off with a powerful melodic trill, contains occasional samples of a child talking, has a spoken-word chorus that Tinashe and Ms. Banks almost bark out, and features a rap verse from Ms. Banks. It somehow brings all of these contrasting elements together with captivating ease. The thumping beat present throughout the song grounds them while simultaneously ensuring you won’t be able to stop yourself from dancing.
If ‘Die a Little Bit’ leaps up and conveys impossible-to-ignore commands, ‘So Much Better’ sits back and relaxes with cool confidence. On the track, Tinashe doesn’t need to tell anyone to do anything — a smooth chorus about how she can love, kiss, treat, and f--- the object of her affections “so much better” can captivate any given room. G-Eazy stumbles through his verse singing Tinashe’s praises and how much he wants her to himself, which serves to prove her ability to get exactly what she wants, exactly when she wants it.
Her seemingly endless ability to attract anything does have its limits, however, as Tinashe conveys on slower songs like ‘Know Better’ and ‘Remember When,’ which trade in oozing confidence for raw vulnerability. Both more stripped-down compared to the rest of the record, the two songs give us a sense of humanity behind the hardships she faces in lower moments. The almost seven-minute-long track ‘Know Better’ consists of two parts — a pop-friendly first half and a slower, more desperate second half, both of which convey a sense of longing. The first half buries her reluctance to move on under a catchy beat, but the second half is where Tinashe’s vocal ability really comes out to play.
Songs For You concludes with the sombre but hopeful ‘Remember When,’ in which Tinashe sings about how she’s “pickin' up the pieces of a mess,” but that she “feel(s) like (herself) again.” Placing this song at the end of the record conveys how much of a moment of growth-producing the record has been for her, and how her struggles have broken her apart but not past the point of eventual healing.
After a tumultuous series of career setbacks, Tinashe had every reason to produce a less-than-stellar record or even to fall apart completely. But unsurprisingly, she took the hard experiences in her professional and personal lives and turned them into some of the best work of her career. Songs For You feels like a long-awaited exhale, a release of everything that’s ever held Tinashe back, and the result is a trip through every musical and emotional corner of the mind of a genius. Not to mention, it’s nearly impossible to argue with someone who confidently spits out the lyric “I just pulled up in a Brinks truck.”
Reviewed By: Frank Tremain