Tinashe wants to create ‘unexpected’ music

Music star Tinashe has opened up about her creative process.

Tinashe strives to make “unexpected” music.

The 33-year-old singer released her new album, Popstar, in September, and Tinashe has explained how she approached making the song Melatonin.

Tinashe told Bustle: “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.”

Tinashe is well-known for being productive, and she credits her unrelenting work ethic to her own impatience.

Asked what makes her so productive, Tinashe said: “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 favourite 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.”

Meanwhile, Tinashe previously suggested that she’s a victim of her own “genre hopping”.

The singer told Interview magazine: “As much as I want all the success and the accolades, I have such a great career, so I’m thankful.

“But I don’t know why. It could be the universe. It could be the way society’s set up. Being a Black woman in music is difficult. There’s been a lot of discrepancy over how to market me. In my early days, people were confused by my genre hopping and my lack of commitment to an urban direction.”