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While she somehow manages to keep her name on our radars, Tinashe’s career has been a bit stalled by a label who has yet to release her sophomore album Joyride.
Recently, The Guardian, sat down with Tinashe to speak about the struggles specific to female artists, especially Black, female artists. In it, she discussed everything from growing up as a biracial girl to the notion that there can only be one or two Black women at the top of the game.
See what she had to say in the excerpts below.
On keeping a positive attitude.
“Things haven’t always gone according to my original plan,” she says calmly, “but that’s life, and things change. However long it takes, I know I will get to my end goal. I’m never going to stop. I will make music forever. Tinashe showed the interviewer a picture of her phone background image, a generic image of a Grammy. Tinashe says her plan is to leave it like that until she can replace it with one of her own. “It’s been like that for years!”
Sexism in the music industry
“As far as female producers or female engineers … when you’re in these studios, it’s all men. It is so rare that they’d not even expect me to have an opinion.” But she did have an opinion, after all, Tinashe self produced her first mix tape which caught the attention of music execs and eventually landed her a record deal.
“It’s so much easier for male artists, I know it is.” She tweeted something to this effect when she tweeted about her label focusing on the release of Zayn Malik’s, formerly of One Direction, solo project. “I sent that message, yeah, that RCA was focused on Zayn? They were! But I have nothing against him; more power to him.”
…
“Male artists don’t really co-sign female artists like that, and if they do it’s always like, ‘Are they f*cking?’ It’s never, ‘Oh, I really like her music.’”
On choosing just one Black woman to support
“Recently, my cousin was with a friend of a friend, who was in high school, and she was like: ‘I’m a fan of Kehlani,’ but in a way that was like, ‘So I can’t be a fan of Tinashe, too.’ Then my friend posed the question, ‘Why not be a fan of both?’ It’s kind of like sport; people feel like they have to pick a side.” Suddenly she springs forward, her default laid-back demeanor temporarily out of the window. “There are hundreds of [male] rappers that all look the same, that sound the same, but if you’re a black woman, you’re either Beyoncé or Rihanna. It’s very, very strange.”
On not being fully accepted by the Black community
“There’s colorism involved in the black community, which is very apparent,” she says carefully. “It’s about trying to find a balance where I’m a mixed woman, and sometimes I feel like I don’t fully fit into the black community; they don’t fully accept me, even though I see myself as a black woman. That disconnect is confusing sometimes.” A shrug. “I am what I am.”
You can read the rest of Tinashe’s article here.
What do you make of her comments?
The post Tinashe On Not Being Fully Accepted By The Black Community & Struggles Of Being A Woman In Music appeared first on MadameNoire.