R&B singer Tinashe still has no idea how Rihanna was able to purchase her new album’s title track without her knowledge.
The 2 On star has been sitting on material for Joyride for a few years after facing a series of issues with label heads at RCA, and one incident left her stunned after she temporarily "lost" the rights to her own song.
"There was a period of time where I lost it," she told Vulture. "We bought it back. It’s kind of crazy and I’m not even 100 per cent sure what happened.
"We created the track, I wanted it for my project, then all of a sudden I found out - I was told - that she (Rihanna) had purchased the whole concept and beat for her project."
The album Rihanna had been working on was 2016’s Anti, and when Joyride wasn’t featured on the track list, Tinashe set out to buy the tune back.
“Eventually when that didn’t come out on her project, I was like, ‘Yup… still want it!’” she recalled. “I named my album after it.”
The Joyride track was one of the few songs she has had for her third studio album, which reaches listeners on Friday (13Apr18) and has been in development for several years.
"A couple other songs that I toured when I did my brief version of the Joyride tour (in 2016) will be on it," she said. “Most of the rest of the album was created relatively recently.”
The 25-year-old reveals she recorded “probably 200 songs” over the years for the project, originally due out in 2016, and despite her frustrations over label delays, Tinashe now feels everything happened for a reason.
“There were a lot of setbacks,” she reflected. “I made the mistake of even talking about the project too soon. When I look back on the entire journey of it, I’m very thankful for the time that it did take. It pushed me to create the version of the album that is coming out now. It was important that it ended up taking as long as it did."
"It just feels right, complete, and urgent," she added of the new and revamped tracks on Joyride. "It represents me."
Joyride is the follow up to Tinashe’s 2016 sophomore release Nightride, which came out two years after her debut album, Aquarius.
