Deep Album Cuts Vol. 365: Tinashe
My last playlist in this series was Charli XCX, and Tinashe seems like a natural choice to follow her with. Both artists started out uploading mixtapes in the early 2010s, landed big mainstream hits in 2014, and both appeared on Ty Dolla Sign's extremely unfortunate 2015 single "Drop That Kitty." And both have spent the last decade weathering ups and downs in the industry that brought them to big comeback moments this summer. Tinashe released Quantum Baby last week and it's a continuation of a great run she's been on the last few years.
2. Far Side of the Moon
3. Cash Race
4. Unconditional
5. Angels f/ Kaash Paige
6. No Broke Boys
7. Touch Pass
8. Ooh La La
9. How Many Times f/ Future
10. The Leap
11. None of My Business
12. Feelings
13. Woke Up Blessed f/ Christian Blue
14. No Contest
15. Sacrifices
16. Tightrope
17. Wildfire
18. Red Flags
19. Link Up
20. C'est La Vie
21. Last Christmas
22. Cross That Line
23. Salt
Tracks 2, 9 and 17 from Aquarius (2014)
Track 10 from The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Pt. 1 (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) (2014)
Tracks 7, 15 and 20 from Nightride (2016)
Tracks 8, 14 and 23 from Joyride (2018)
Tracks 3, 12 and 19 from Songs For You (2019)
Track 21 from Comfort & Joy (2020)
Tracks 4 and 5 from 333 (2021)
Track 13 from 333 (Deluxe) (2022)
Tracks 1, 11 and 16 from BB/ANG3L (2023)
Tracks 6, 18 and 22 from Quantum Baby (2024)
I will say right off the bat, this playlist feels a little incomplete because a lot of Tinashe released several mixtapes from 2011 to 2015 that never made it to Spotify and Apple Music: In Case We Die, Reverie, Black Water, and Amethyst. Most of that stuff is on Tinashe's official Soundcloud and is very much worth listening to, and to the extent that she was known before "2 On," it was because of those tapes (or, I guess, her 3-episode arc on "Two And A Half Men"). Maybe now that Tinashe is an indie artist, she could try to get that music on streaming services in some capacity.
Aquarius was a pretty great debut album and for a moment I think it baffled a lot of people that "2 On" didn't make her into a huge star. RCA really seemed to struggle with letting Tinashe continue her mixtape sound and also pursue something that sounded bigger and more polished, which wound up with weird compromises like Joyride and its preceding project Nightride, which both performed about the same despite one being hyped as 'the big album' and the other being treated more like a mixtape.
Given that Tinashe was putting together pretty good projects before she was signed, though, parting with RCA turned out to be a really good idea and she's made some of her best albums as an indie artist from Songs For You onwards. Christmas albums are often the weakest entry in an artist's discography, and "ultra modern versions of familiar holiday classics" is one of the most common ways they can go badly. So I wanted to put in a word for the Comfort & Joy EP, she really pulls off a nice balancing act with the hip beats and old-fashioned melodies, she's got one of the only covers of Wham's "Last Christmas" that I like.
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on Wednesday, August 21, 2024 at 4:00 AM.
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