Tinashe doesn’t believe artists or their music need to be confined to specific genres.
During a new interview with Nicky at Night, the singer opened up about her opposition to music categorization, explaining that genre labels can restrict both artists creating music and listeners looking to discover new sounds.
“See, I’m very anti-genre in general,” Tinashe said. “I think it’s limiting in terms of like both listeners, how they approach finding music, discovering music… how creatives are approaching making music.”
“I think it keeps us in very narrow categories,” she added. “That’s like just unnecessary.”
The conversation comes as Tinashe continues promoting her eighth studio album, Popstar, while also sharing her own take on what “pop” really means. Rather than seeing it as a fixed sound, the 33-year-old views pop as a genre that can draw inspiration from just about anywhere.
“To me, pop to me is not mutually exclusive of all of the other genres,” she said. “Like I think there’s R&B in pop music. I think there’s hip-hop in pop music. I think there’s dance in pop music. There’s country in pop music.”
Tinashe feels listeners sometimes connect pop with a more polished and sanitized sound that fails to capture everything the genre can offer.
“I think there’s been like a watered down, very simple, very clean version of that that people kind of have like a negative connotation towards,” she explained. “I think for me it’s just so much more boundless than that.”
That perspective also carries over to the title of Popstar. For Tinashe, being a pop star isn’t necessarily defined by the kind of music an artist creates.
“I feel like pop star is a way of life,” she said. “It’s a persona. It’s an energy. It’s an attitude.”
Tinashe has continued speaking about the limitations of genre throughout her latest press run. She recently told The Hollywood Reporter that being placed into a specific category was “definitely probably the biggest hindrance” to how audiences viewed her career.
Released Sept. 25, Popstar contains 16 tracks with no guest appearances and marks Tinashe’s first major-label album since 2018’s Joyride. The project also wraps up the trilogy she launched with 2023’s BB/Ang3l and continued with 2024’s Quantum Baby.
