Tinashe has never been one to wait around. Since leaving girl group The Stunners in 2011, she has been a self-starter — she’s released seven albums in the past 10 years and ‘Quantum Baby’ is her second in 11 months.
When ‘BB/Ang3l’ dropped last September as part one of a trilogy, we heard an artist brimming with confidence and not afraid to borrow from disparate influences, bolstering her core R&B sound with flashes of drum & bass, UK garage and futuristic fun. Here, she pushes that notion even further.
Of course the headline draw here is Nasty, a lead single that has been crowned TikTok’s song of the summer. That she ends ‘Quantum Baby’ with such a seismic hit is a stroke of genius, keeping fans invested until they hear what they know.
But that’s not to say anything that comes before it is much of a slouch, either. No Simulation starts as a delicate amuse-bouche for the record, before the fidgeting drum machines, bright horns and pounding bass of Getting No Sleep really build on the blueprint of Tinashe’s work.
But as songs evoke everybody from Janet Jackson and Christina Milian to Charli XCX and Tyla, there’s a distinct feeling that we’ve heard this all before. Tinashe has shown that she can stand out, particularly on her promising early mixtapes, but ‘Quantum Baby’ feels like it’s going through the motions at times, however well produced and performed it may be.
Still, the album blossoms as it progresses and the final run of the intimate When I Get You Alone, the stupidly fun No Broke Boys and Nasty is utterly irresistible. That it’s another short, sweet affair — it’s roughly two minutes longer than ‘BB/Ang3l’ at 22:05 — is a shame, but the replayability value is huge and, actually, splitting this project into three parts allows Tinashe to make every entry feel vital.
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