Tinashe: Broke Boys, Golf Bros & Short Kings
Tinashe discusses her journey from a 14-year-old girl group member to an independent artist, navigating industry pressures while maintaining authenticity. She shares insights on dating standards, relationship patterns, and her new album 'Pop Star,' emphasizing the importance of not conforming to industry expectations and prioritizing personal fulfillment over external validation.
Summary
In this Call Her Daddy episode, host Alex Cooper interviews musician Tinashe about her career trajectory and personal life. Tinashe reflects on her early experiences in the music industry at age 14, including opening for Justin Bieber and the pressures she faced to conform to industry standards. She discusses how she struggled with fitting into predetermined boxes and how her song '2ON' became a confidence anthem during her college years.
Tinashe addresses the industry's confusion about how to market her, explaining that she had to constantly push back against people's expectations and resist being shelved by her label. She emphasizes that leaving her label and going independent forced her to become more authentic and real about her feelings and needs.
Regarding dating and relationships, Tinashe reveals she's currently single but open to dating more seriously than before. She discusses the standards from her 'No Broke Boys' music video, rejecting broke men, social media personalities, club promoters, and emotionally unavailable partners. She shares experiences of being a sugar mama to a broke boyfriend, getting burned through social media discoveries, and getting stuck in extended situationships.
Tinashe reflects on her song 'I'd Rather Be Alone,' which addresses holding onto hope that someone would change. She explains that the song is about emotional avoidance and unfulfilled relationships—situations where someone appears present but remains emotionally distant. She acknowledges that potential is just potential and that she'd rather be alone than stay in unfulfilling relationships.
On healing from breakups, Tinashe reveals she grieves the potential she saw for herself within the relationship rather than the person. She discusses cyclical patterns in both her personal life and career, noting that loneliness and seasonal changes can trigger setbacks in healing. She addresses internet hate, explaining that only criticism about her performances affects her because she's self-critical, while trolling doesn't bother her.
Tinashe discusses her new album 'Pop Star,' which represents multiple genres under one umbrella term and reflects her evolution as an artist. She emphasizes the importance of play and freedom in the creative process, challenging herself by adding contrasting elements. She concludes by defining success as the ability to make art comfortably, tour, create visuals, and maintain her full creative self without external constraints.
About this episode
Join Alex in the studio for a conversation with Tinashe. Tinashe gets real about the dating patterns she’s trying to break, navigating situationships, and healing after heartbreak. She also opens up about refusing to be put in a box by the industry and building a career on her own terms. Enjoy!
Key Insights
- Tinashe was pressured to water down her artistic vision to fit into predetermined industry boxes (Britney, Beyoncé, Pussycat Dolls templates), and resisting this pressure required leaving her label to maintain authenticity.
- She describes being shelved as a real threat faced by young artists—where labels stop funding projects but keep artists contractually bound, creating a trap that discourages resistance to industry demands.
- Tinashe identifies a fundamental contradiction in her personality: she's introverted and needs alone time to recharge, but also loves performing and entertaining large audiences, requiring her to navigate between solitude and public presence.
- She uses her art as a 'funnel for vulnerability,' allowing her to express feelings and thoughts she wouldn't communicate in personal relationships, creating a pattern where she's more articulate through music than direct conversation.
- Tinashe experienced being a financial caregiver in a relationship (taking cash out of ATMs for dates with a broke boyfriend), which directly inspired her 'No Broke Boys' song and became a hard boundary for future dating.
- She identifies avoidant emotional partners as particularly painful because they create an impenetrable distance even during physical intimacy—'you can never get in'—leading to unfulfilled relationships where she couldn't achieve the deep connection she sought.
- Tinashe argues that what makes situationships more painful than labeled relationships is their ambiguity and lack of clear resolution, sometimes lasting years in cycles of attraction and rejection.
- She defines her upcoming success not by commercial metrics but by the ability to make art comfortably, tour with her desired creative vision, and maintain complete creative freedom without external constraints or worry.
Topics
Transcript
What is up daddy gang? It is your founding father, Alex Cooper with Call Her Daddy. Tinashe, welcome to Call Her Daddy. Hi, thanks for having me. I am so excited to have you here. I was thinking about this on my way here. I was like, the year was 2014. Yeah. And I was a freshman in college. I had horrible extensions. Yeah. I was. You had to. It was a rite of passage, honestly. My hair was like silver. I had really bad eyelash extensions that were like kind of like coming off. Yeah. And when 2-1 came out, the pregame was never the same. Anytime I felt like I was like, I need feel something I would…
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