Tinashe: Quantum Baby Album Review

To put it in terms quantum physicist Erwin Schrödinger might understand, Tinashe has both finally arrived and has always been here. Over the last few albums, the singer-songwriter has transformed herself into an autodidact of production, mixing, and general perseverance outside of the major label system. Tinashe hasn’t courted a mainstream audience in years, instead cultivating a broad artistic vision and an IYKYK ethos that made her an outlier in an industry obsessed with conformity. Rocket-launched by the summer takeover of “Nasty,” a lip-biting, hip gyrating, flirty-wink of a song that activated nerves at both ends of the spine—everyone’s a freak for something, be it sex toys or anti-colonialist literature—her elastic seventh album is a cool-girl marker for those drawn to the California bombshell’s malleable, kinetic sound.

Quantum Baby is a lean and muscular eight-song accompaniment to 2023’s BB/Ang3l that asserts itself with the insistence of manicured nails tapping on a hard surface: There are things to do and people to flip off. Opener “No Simulation” is a slinky almost-ballad that quickly announces itself as Brandy-inspired, courtesy of Tinashe’s dynamic vocal stacking. “These days I wanna feel it, no simulation/It’s gotta be true,” she croons. It sounds like she’s looking for real love—but then again, Tinashe is a comedic and peculiar storyteller (her one-liners in Two and a Half Men always landed), and when she pledges “to go deeper,” she might be giving more explicit directions.

“Getting No Sleep” is a windows-down, stereo-blasting song. Tinashe has confessed to working on her music while behind the wheel and it’s easy to envision her driving around LA with this sweetly erotic hit on repeat, getting a feel for how it accelerates and fades away. It’s for the club and the road, aided by a persistent bassline and skillfully placed rhythmic loops that deftly slide into the killer “Thirsty.” Even as her vocals are surrounded by hi-hats and synths, dripping in innuendo, they sound stripped and naked. She’s assured and capable, hovering in a fluttering register: “Don’t play, don’t hurt me/Tryna make you so thirsty/I know that you want me in the worst way/Do it like it’s my birthday.”

It helps that Tinashe makes being thirsty look cool, never desperate. Everyone is hooking up, and the singer wants the fiending to be confident and clear, the cosmic opposite of a low-effort “hey” in the DMs. She continues the pleasure quest on “When I Get You Alone,” making noticeable callbacks to Janet Jackson’s “I Get Lonely”: Both songs are committed to the beat drop and the patience love requires. “No Broke Boys” and “Red Flags” touch on intimate disappointments, calibrated to proliferate shady IG captions. The sparse writing sometimes lags as it revisits well-trodden topics—it’s not deep enough to jolt any festering memories. It’s just the tip of what could really be experienced. (A Flo Milli feature could have injected some needed whimsy.)

After branching out as an independent artist three albums ago, Tinashe has less and less to prove. Easy as it is to understand the appeal of “Nasty” (it’s “catchy” and “memeable,” Tinashe opined), there’s two reasons that it’s become her first solo Billboard hit and highest charting single since “2 On,” 2014’s turn-up anthem with Schoolboy Q. The first is the very ’20s fortune of hitting the TikTok lottery, which brought her to a bigger audience without having to spend a dime. The second is that “Nasty” just happens to be the platonically great Tinashe song: Easy and exquisite, an evolution without a departure.