Roy Rochlin/FilmMagic
Tinashe has also tried to split the difference between artistic and commercial dictates, with uneven success. Her early, electronic-fused mixtapes had a wonderfully hermetic feel, as if she were singing quietly into a microphone on her laptop. On her 2014 major label debut Aquarius, she leavened her dense, whispery meditations, like “Cold Sweat,” with swaggy and accessible confections, like “2 On,” a delirious celebration of over-drinking that climbed the upper reaches of the Billboard top 40. But despite critical acclaim — Jon Caramanica of the New York Times called Aquarius “one of the most inventive R&B albums of recent years” — she hasn’t been able to score anything on the scale of “2 On.” Meanwhile, her long-delayed follow-up Joyride remains unreleased, leading her fans to protest with the hashtag #FreeTinashe.
In a recent interview with The Guardian, Tinashe caused an uproar when she talked about “colorism,” and her worry that, as a black woman of mixed race, “sometimes I feel like I don’t fully fit into the black community.” While the comment seemed to address her personal experiences, some fans took it as sour grapes over her seemingly flailing career. Regardless, it was a moment of frustration for a wildly creative artist facing limited options. “There are hundreds of [male] rappers that all look the same, that sound the same, but if you’re a black woman, you’re either Beyoncé or Rihanna,” she said.
A similar quandary affected Solána “SZA” Rowe, the singer from New Jersey whose abstract, unclassifiable R&B initially seemed too non-commercial for mainstream consumption. Three years after her mixtape Z caused a sensation in 2013, she publicly expressed frustration with her record label, TDE, which is best known for introducing West Coast rap lyricists like Kendrick Lamar and Schoolboy Q. “I actually quit,” she wrote on Twitter, upset that TDE wouldn’t release her debut album. (She later clarifiedit was her, not TDE, that caused her debut album’s long delay. Eventually, she told The Guardian, “They just took my hard drive from me.”)
The fact that the resulting Ctrl debuted at No. 3 on the Billboard charts upon its June 9 release speaks to how even an idiosyncratic, experimental artist like SZA can reach beyond the tastemakers who initially championed her. (It also doesn’t hurt that she’s signed to one of the hottest boutique record companies in the industry right now.) Major labels and radio executives may be hesitant to back this new wave of fearlessly adventurous R&B women — from the metaphysical love songs of SZA to the ’90s homage of Kehlani — with the promotional resources they deserve. But they seem to be finding an audience anyway, whether the pop market acknowledges them or not.
Article Appeared @http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2017/08/09/541951925/kehlani-and-r-bs-women-of-color-struggle-to-be-heard-in-pop-market