Tinashe has spent years fighting the label that made her famous. Now she wants to own it.
The 33-year-old singer released Popstar, her latest album, on Sept. 25, and she is making the case that the record’s title is not a trap but a statement of intent. “I feel very self-assured and confident,” she told The Hollywood Reporter on a Zoom call from what appeared to be an outdoor patio, pacing as she spoke.
The album comes after seven years of growth, during which she left the major label system in 2019 and built her own path. The confidence she describes is personal and professional, she says, and it is the foundation of an album that rejects easy definitions.
Popstar as Confidence Project
Popstar is a record that Tinashe says reflects a moment of clarity. “I’ve just reached a place in my life, personally and professionally, where I feel very self-assured and confident in my position,” she said. “Both in the industry and just I guess as an individual.”
The album’s name is not meant to box her in. Tinashe has never wanted to limit herself to one category, and she sees her music as proof of that. “The categorization was definitely probably the biggest hindrance to how I think I was perceived to the public and the world,” she said.
To her, a pop star is not a genre. It is an energy, an embodiment, an ownership of space. “It’s an energy, it’s an embodiment, it’s an ownership of a space that I want to take up in the world,” she said.
Genre Definition
When asked directly whether she was trying to define pop as a genre, Tinashe pushed back. She framed the album as a response to narrow expectations. “People, when they think of the genre of pop, they have a very watered down and narrow-minded point of view of what that sounds like and looks like,” she said. “I hope to challenge that.”
She wants pop to feel more expansive.
The Performance of Pop
Social media has played an interesting role in her career, and Tinashe now sees it as a tool for storytelling. She described it as a performance, a way to tell the story of the album through the act of posting.
“I have a good relationship with social media right now,” she said. “Sometimes that hasn’t always been the case over the years, but I think now I see it in the same way as this whole album concept. There’s an element of performance that is, I guess, a through line. It’s both known and used as a tool.”
She found that the pressure of posting had eased. “Whereas, I felt [at times] in the past, there was just way more pressure to, who knows, post more or do whatever,” she said. Now she enjoys it more.
DJing as Another Tool
Tinashe has been exploring dance music for years, and she sees DJing as another skill in her arsenal. “There’s a couple ways that I feel like I’ve really connected with DJing,” she said.
One is dance culture itself. “I really enjoy that. It’s really important, maybe now more than ever, for us to have community. To have connection and these points of connection — whether it be live shows, live spaces or places where people can listen to music together, I think is really important,” she said.
The other is the exploration of the genre. “I’ve dabbled and explored that genre a lot over the years and that led me to more collaborations in the space and working in the space,” she said. “That just opens your mind to — again, in the spirit of blending these worlds and blending these genres — I feel like we need more women in this space. We need more Black women in the space. We need more conversation.”
Pop Star Is a Muse
When asked whether she saw herself as a DJ separate from her pop star identity, Tinashe answered with a nuanced distinction. “Yes, I do. In the same way, but different,” she said. “When I think of myself as a pop star, it’s an additional skill, an additional tool to my tool belt, versus an entirely separate thing.”
She listed the skills that define the pop star to her. “You can dance, you sing, you can DJ, you can create music, you can write music, you’re the muse. That’s what it’s all about.”
The Machine of Pop
One of the themes of Popstar is the machinery of the pop industry itself. Tinashe said she was exploring that visually and conceptually, poking fun at the machine of perfection. “We obviously know the cliches that are involved with being a pop star and being a part of that machine,” she said.
She wants to reject those expectations while embracing the spectacle. “By embodying what a pop star is, I can both lean into the spectacle and the show of it all, and I can also reject it and be like, ‘Fuck you, I am who I am. I might not fit this mold or expectation, but this is still what a pop star is because I said so.'”
Taking Back Control
The album represents a return to control for Tinashe. After leaving the major label system in 2019, she found success pursuing the music and creative direction she wanted. That process took seven years, and she admits it was a journey of growth and learning.
Realizing she could do this on her own restored her confidence in creativity. “Realizing I was able to do this on my own restored the confidence in creativity that I felt I had been losing,” she said.
That confidence was the North star of the creative process. “That was really important for me, just where I am in my life, because when I wanted to write this new project, I really wanted to embody that energy. That was the North star of how the creative came together in my mind,” she said.
Online Presence
Tinashe is online, and she embraces it. “I’m definitely online,” she said. “I’m online a lot.”
She sees social media as a way to perform and tell the story of the album. “There’s an element of performance that is, I guess, a through line. It’s both known and used as a tool,” she said.
Release Timeline
| Event | Date |
|---|---|
| Left major label system | 2019 |
| Album release | Sept. 25 |
Tinashe is not trying to escape the pop star label. She is trying to redefine it.
The album is a statement of her position, her confidence and her creative freedom. It is a reminder that labels are tools, not traps. Tinashe has spent her career proving that. Now she is telling everyone what that really means.
Source material: “Tinashe Wants to Challenge the Pop Star Label,” The Hollywood Reporter.
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