Do You Match Your Own Freak?
on Tinashe and embracing who you are
It’s a good time to be a Tinashe stan: her viral hit “Nasty” just secured her her first solo entry into the Billboard “Hot 100” (justice for “Link Up”!!) and her forthcoming 7th album, Quantum Baby, is coming out on August 16th. I was in college when “2 On” dropped, so the song is fused into my DNA, and I take great pleasure in watching Tinashe have what feels like a long overdue moment of mainstream success. It’s particularly enjoyable to watch her pop off with “Nasty,” which asks the listener “is somebody gonna match my freak?” over and over again. This period in the spotlight comes after years of the artist making a concerted (and not always easy) effort to center herself, her own creativity, and her goals in her work – essentially matching her own freak and refusing to compromise on that, so this feels like poetic justice in a way.
When I made this TikTok about matching your own freak, I was kidding, which is how I typically spend my time on these internet streets – but there was a kernel of something more serious below the surface. I think many of us are searching for someone to “match our freak” – that is, understand, value, and ultimately complement our unique weirdness, the inimitable perspective and quirks that could have only resulted from our singular personality being placed in the circumstances that shaped us. But it’s impossible to find this person – and dare I say, truly enjoy your life – if you have not matched your own freak: wholly embraced the idiosyncrasies that make you you, instead of shrinking yourself to fit into spaces that cannot contain you in order to be embraced by people who do not understand you.
This is easier said than done, as we all know. If you’ve been blessed enough to survive middle school then you know how harshly people can be judged, mocked, and ostracized for daring to be slightly weird, and this juvenile behavior persists far beyond the hallway during passing time (unfortunately.) But, as I’ve written about before, I believe that being ourselves is our true life’s work, and our ability to do anything else successfully comes first from choosing to master this pursuit and using it to guide us. This is a truth that many people either never realize or are too afraid to really engage with, fearing the censure and rejection of their peers, but it’s something Tinashe is acutely aware of – and it’s played a key role in her getting to where she is.
In 2018, the singer left her label after years of conflict: a three year delay for her sophomore album, Joyride; a canceled tour; rumors of the label shelving her work to prioritize other artists. It’s clear now, six years later, that taking full control of her career and eliminating any adulteration of her vision is precisely what she needed. After leaving, she dropped two albums in short order as an independent artist before signing to a new indie label and releasing her most recent project, last year’s acclaimed (if still somewhat underrated, in my opinion) BB/ANG3L. “Who I am at my core is ultimately what I have to go with in order to make my best work,” Tinashe said in an interview with Dazed at the time of that project’s release. “I have to really tune into that and not allow other voices to get in the way.” It’s no surprise that after making the decision to go independent she’s finally breaking through the noise of the industry to achieve mainstream success: the choice “ “empowered [her], both as a person and an artist, to stand by [her] decisions and trust [her] instincts.”1
When we are authentically ourselves, it firstly enables us to do our best work: we call back the energy that we’d have put into pretending to be something else and pour it back into ourselves, leading to a greater understanding of who we are, what we want, and our talents. Tinashe’s trajectory aligns with this. After leaving her label and regaining control of her work, she stopped feeling like she had something to prove, because creating and putting out her two next independent projects – wherein she put herself and her vision first – “gave [her] a lot of validation in [her]self,”2 eliminating the need to be validated externally by others. But centering ourselves in this way has effects that go far beyond us, because when we are true to ourselves we release an energy that others can’t help but be drawn to and respond to, as I said when writing about Jenna Lyons and her paradoxical turn as the coolest real housewife of New York. We see the same phenomenon now in Tinashe’s success. Authenticity is magnetic in a way that contorting yourself to fit in will never be – you can’t out do the doer, and trying to be a cheap imitation of someone else will always produce a watered down effect.
Other people will sense this, but that’s much less important than the fundamental discomfort that being untrue to yourself creates because of the dissonance between who you truly are and who you are pretending to be. In Tinashe’s case, this means blocking out “embarrassing” projects she had to put out due to label coercion (collabs with notorious abusers Chris Brown and R.Kelly)3 in order to be marketed as a mainstream pop artist despite her clear alternative influences. For us, it can mean anything from finding ourselves decades deep into pursuing a career we hate due to external pressures to just feeling a slight longing to dress differently because we’re too afraid to act on the personal style we have in our heads. Big or small, these moments of self-betrayal produce the same results: inauthenticity and unease. So to return to the eternal question, “is somebody gonna match my freak?,” I’ll posit yes – but only if we choose to match our own first.
Stay weird,
Lola xx