The Nasty Renaissance of Tinashe
Her freak is finally being matched, over a decade into her career.
The last time Tinashe saw herself on the Billboard Hot 100 chart was in 2016 with her feature on Britney Spears’ “Slumber Party" (which reached No. 86). Her last song of her own to chart on the Hot 100 was her debut single “2 On” – which peaked at No. 24 in 2014. A full decade later, is back on the Billboard charts – as an independent artist – with her viral smash “Nasty."
Tinashe has often been revered as one of the best talents of her generation. Since debuting with her mixtape ‘In Case We Die’ in 2012 and her first album ‘Aquarius’ in 2014, Tinashe has been heralded as one of the pioneers in the new wave of genre-bending “alt R&B.”
She signed to RCA Records after gaining massive internet hype with her first 3 mixtapes (In Case We Die, Reverie, Black Water) and quickly saw success with her debut single “2 On” featuring ScHoolyboy Q. The song became a massive hit in 2014, and even spawned remixes from artists like Drake.
Tinashe’s appeal as an artist is her ability to be a chameleon. She can easily float between any genre – which seemed to become a point of contention with her record label after the success of “2 On”. She’s a trained dancer, a Britney & Janet stan, an actress, producer, songwriter…she’s the full package. Her label wanted to make her a bonafide popstar – but she lost her unique identity in the process.
Fans of her early mixtapes missed the alternative sound that got her signed in the first place. After years of not being happy with her label’s handling of her career, a slew of cookie-cutter singles, a less than favorable sophomore album ‘Joyride’, and scrapped projects – Tinashe left RCA in 2018 and decided to go independent.
In 2019, she released her first independent single “Die A Little Bit” featuring UK rapper Ms. Banks. The song was a grungy, electro, basement banger that was a complete departure from the singles she had released with RCA Records. Immediately, her fanbase rallied behind her again. Her first independent album ‘Songs For You’ saw critical acclaim and social media praise for it’s experimentation with genres and freshness. She was back. Independent, but back.
“Independent Tinashe” is a rare artist who has found the middle ground between being super experimental and being commercial at the same time. She works with drum n’ bass producers to make pop songs. She works with trap producers to make electro-R&B records.
But, the hard thing about being an independent artist is the lack of resources. There’s no label to send your music to radio stations. There are no built-in relationships with DSPs like Spotify or Apple Music to get you playlisted. There’s no big marketing budget to help you promote your music period. Everything you want to do –YOU have to make happen, and it gets very costly. You receive full creative control (which is what Tinashe craved) but she sacrificed “the machine” in the process.
As commercial as some of her independent singles have been, she hasn’t had “the machine” to help make them become hits. Her projects ‘Songs For You’, ‘333’, and ‘BB/Ang3l’ all have songs that in theory sound like chart-topping hits. If her songs like “Bouncin”, “X”, and “Save Room For Us” were released by a priority major label artist, they’d easily have become smashes with Grammy nominations, etc.
But Tinashe was on a long, winding, independent road. And it finally paid off with her latest single “Nasty.”
“Nasty” has taken on its own life on social media. Its lyric “Is somebody gonna match my freak” has become a part of pop culture in its own right. The sexy, minimal West-Coast bop has seen at least 3 dance challenges on TikTok, the most popular stemming from a fan edit to an old video of TikToker Nate Di Winer. Tinashe remixed that video on TikTok, and the rest is history.
Now, if you open social media, you’ll see Tinashe everywhere. Pride Month events. EDM and Amapiano DJ sets. WNBA games. Alexander Wang fashion shows. Peleton Studio classes. In the streets of NYC (ala dudewithsign). Jimmy Kimmel Live. She’s promoting the song as if she’s a brand new artist, and she’s being allotted opportunities that she’s probably been passed up on since she’s gone independent.
That’s the power of social media and virality in 2024. And all of this has led her back to the Billboard Hot 100 chart after 10 years.
And that’s not the end of “Nasty.” Tinashe has stated that slew of her peers have been sending in verses for upcoming remixes. It’s gonna be a Nasty summer!
Let this be a lesson to all creatives in persistence and believing in your art. Tinashe believed, and it took a while, but the Nasty Renaissance is upon us!
Her next album ‘Quantum Baby’ drops this summer and is led by the now HIT single “Nasty."