Tinashe gave her fans the first taste of her upcoming album on Oct. 24. The neo-R&B singer dropped “Die A Little Bit,” the opening cut from Songs For You. The track is an electro-pop bop about living life to the fullest – “Plenty time wasted, what are we waitin’ for? / Searching for something in someone without a soul / Running in circles cuz I suck at letting go / Starting to feel like there’s no chance of breaking through / Plenty time wasted, what are we waitin’ for?” sings Tinashe, per Genius – but the real joy is the accompanying video.
Filmed in a dimly lit room resembling a modern speakeasy, Tinashe proves that she hasn’t lost a step – literally. Her choreography is almost as hot as she is, and she pulls off these dance moves while wearing the shortest pair of shorts. When Ms Banks, the British rapper dubbed “one of the most important women” in the UK rap scene by i-D, drops in, that’s when the party really kicks off. If this is just the first taste of Songs For You, fans have a reason to be hyped.
Tinashe’s upcoming album won’t just be about sexy moves and getting “enough to last the whole time / To last the whole night, to last my whole life.” In a trailer for her upcoming album, released at the start of October, Tinashe spoke about the struggles of being overlooked and misunderstood. “Do you ever feel like nobody knows who the f*ck you are?” she said in the clip, according to HotNewHipHop. “All the time, I feel so authentic with my life, and somehow, people still don’t understand me. They don’t understand what I’m about. They don’t understand how I move…They say, ‘Who are you? Who are you? Who are you?’ Which is f*cking weird to me because I know exactly who I am.”
This frustration may be tied to Tinashe’s recent split from RCA. She parted ways with the record label in February. The relationship started off strong, with her publicly announcing the partnership in 2014. But, in a 2016 interview with Rolling Stone, it seemed that she was suffering “creative differences” with RCA.
“Her relationship with RCA was a long-term relationship, but they needed space,” her manager, Mike Nazzaro, said at the time. “It was time to part ways. She’s excited for this next step in her career. We’re trying to decide now, if we want new partners, who the next ones will be.”