Tinashe Is The People’s Pop Star

All month long, Bustle’s annual The Entertainers Issue is celebrating the performers and creators who lit up our screens and beyond in 2026.

The work of a Popstar never ends. On the eve of her eighth studio album in late September, Tinashe had a release party to attend in New York City, but she and her team also had some last-minute business to settle: finalizing social media posts to spread the word. “We went to some Asian fusion restaurant and were just on our phones,” Tinashe recalls, offering a snapshot of the big night. “When it drops, you have to be locked in. The post got to go up on eight different platforms.”

No one can accuse the 33-year-old of not putting in the hours. Since she started self-releasing mixtapes in 2012, the singer has never taken more than two years to release a new body of work. There have been highs — a generational turn-up anthem in “2 On”; unexpected streaming hits in “Nasty” and “No Broke Boys” — but also her share of roadblocks. She split from her previous label in 2019 over creative differences that, she’s said, whittled down her confidence. And though she subsequently burnished a reputation as a genre innovator on lean, kaleidoscopic projects like BB/Ang3l and Quantum Baby, her perma-underdog status remained.

Until now. Popstar received the best reviews of her career, including an eye-popping 9.0 score from Pitchfork, and debuted at No. 6 on the Billboard 200 — her first top 10 debut on that chart. Next spring, she’ll play some of the biggest shows of her career yet when she opens a pair of stadium dates for Harry Styles.

Tinashe took a victory lap this month by making a surprise appearance during Charli XCX’s headlining set at Austin City Limits. “It’s an amazing feeling when people who have been working and creating art in this game for a long time receive their flowers,” Tinashe says of her “B2b” and “Drop That Kitty” collaborator (who also knows firsthand how it can take a few albums for the world to catch up to your brilliance). “Charli’s rise to mainstream success as someone I consider a peer has been so heartwarming and inspiring to witness, and I’m thankful to be able to share these experiences together.”

Popstar’s warm reception settled some of the existential questions that have hung over Tinashe’s career — questions the album also grapples with directly: Can she summit the pop world while still pushing at its limits? Are ambition and talent enough in a fickle music industry known for routinely crushing spirits? Across its 16 tracks, Tinashe works through her feelings about her career while swerving between sonic extremes. Lead single “Too Easy” serves up TRL-era spectacle with a winking music video about the disposability of pop stars. On “Melatonin,” she trades the stage for the DJ booth, rejecting classic song structures for a chopped-up techno workout. By the end of the ride, she’s reckoning with her “oldest daughter” angst over a simple acoustic guitar.

“I’m the thread of connectivity between all of the different things that I love,” Tinashe says. “And my different projects, them really feeling like me is just a result of them coming from my brain.”

That’s the upside of taking the long road: There’s no question who’s in the driver’s seat. “I’m excited to be a part of spearheading these conversations about what pop is and expanding people’s minds and narrow definitions,” she says. “I hope we can continue to diversify and continue on this trajectory.”

On finding her groove:

“Popstar” was the first song I made for this record and my mission statement. I always came back to that one as the North Star, thematically. I didn’t know I wanted to name the album Popstar at the time, but I knew that was the tone that I was setting. Relationships, love — that has been a super afterthought in this season of my life, so I wanted to keep it really focused on what’s going on in my life: a ton of work and dealing with how I feel about it.

Over the course of the next two years, I did a bunch of sessions, made a bunch of songs. Some of them I wasn’t loving the direction of. For a while, I was kind of like, “Eh, I don’t really know where I’m going with this.” Then around the holidays of last year, I went into my creative cave, which is my favorite way to make songs — to really isolate myself and lock in. Basically, that week, I made 10 of the records on this project.

On the club-ready standout “Melatonin”:

Every day I’m just trying to challenge myself, and the people that I’m with, to do something that is unexpected. I got in the studio with my friends Nick [Weiss] and Zack [Sekoff] and was like, “I’ve got a bunch of a cappellas from different songs that I’ve been working on that I keep on deck in case we want to flip it or try to make something out of it.” That’s really what it started with: just a little piece of vocal, and we started building around that.

I love working with people who are down to get weird. That keeps me on my toes, and I think that’s when I get the best output: when I feel a little bit challenged and intrigued by a piece of music, and it’s not just super straightforward or easy.

On external validation:

I’d unsubscribed from it because I’ve never really had external validation in this type of way. I’ve never even sniffed the top 10 of a [major] Billboard chart. So that isn’t something that I even like to know, let alone be concerned with. I was surprised by the reaction, honestly. People are like, “Why are you surprised?!” And I’m like, “Why wouldn’t I be surprised?” The album doesn’t feel particularly different from a creative standpoint. I think the reception is the difference, which is exciting to say the least.

On the #UpliftTinashe trend:

It’s so nice and wholesome. I think my fans have been ready to see this critical reception. A lot of them have been riding with me for a really long time, and they’re very, very passionate about their love for me. I think it felt very validating for them as a fan base as well. So it was really cute to see.

I was reading a thread on Twitter recently where someone posed the question like, “How did you get into Tinashe? What was your thing?” And all the responses were super different, which I thought was so interesting. It went from, like, “I saw her on Rent Live!” to “I saw her open for Nicki Minaj in 2015” or “I heard ‘2 On’ on the radio in Dubai.” Some people were like, “I found out about her last week!” It was a really fun thread to dig through.

On her love of “Twitter”:

I’m chronically online, so I’m on all the social media apps. I don’t have beef with any of them. I actually love Twitter. I’ve always been a fan of Twitter, and I’ll always call it Twitter, too. I spend a lot of time on there. The news — absolutely not. But the conversation is great there. I think you can get a more nuanced [take] than on other platforms.

On her famous productivity:

I think it’s a couple things. I’m really impatient — when I have ideas, I like to get them out there. And then on a spiritual level, I really feel like you have to put things out into the universe in order to receive feedback from the universe. I’m a big believer that you have to release in order to get new ideas, which is my favorite thing about what I do. I’m a big perfectionist, but it never holds me back from dropping content. The content got to come out. I’ve never been trepidatious to drop a new project.

On opening for Harry Styles next year:

I’m most excited for a brand-new audience. I haven’t opened for someone on a tour in a long time. So that’ll be a new experience — and a new challenge, to see how they receive me. Playing a stadium will be another challenge because it’s so massive, and I think it’s in the round. I mean, I’d love the budget for 100 dancers — we can’t afford that. [Laughs.] We’ll just make it make sense. We always put on the best show that we possibly can given what we got. That’s the vibe: Make the best of every situation.