Tinashe Turns Up Bayou Music Center

“Houston y’all know what time it is!” Tinashe yelled out as her first Billboard Top 100 hit song, “Nasty”, played and had hundreds of Bayou Music Center attendees screaming and singing “Is somebody gonna match my freak?” with her Thursday night.

New fans have come to know Tinashe through “Nasty”, as it’s been a viral song used in popular TikTok’s since its release in early April of this year, but Tinashe’s been on the R&B scene for more than a decade now.

Her music career began back in 2012, where the aspiring R&B singer time dropped her first solo mixtape In Case We Die in February of that year. This put an up-and-coming Tinashe on record label radars and she signed to RCA records in July of that same year.

She dropped her first studio album a few years later in 2014 titled Aquarius. This album featured tracks with massive names in Hip-hop at the time, and many of which are still big names in the game today, like ScHoolboy Q, A$AP Rocky and Future. The track “2 On” with ScHoolboy would go on to be her first Billboard hit and had Tinashe off to a hot start early in her career.

Tinashe would continue to release music and begin to collaborate with some of the hottest names in pop culture, including Usher, Brittney Spears and Enrique Iglesias.

Before her music career, she was an actor. Appearing on numerous occasions in the early 2000s hit TV show, “Two and a Half Men,” she was a voice actor in the original Avatar: The Last Airbender TV series on Nickelodeon.

Her recent rise back into popularity has been a long time coming. She now has her fifth Billboard Charting song — her first in nearly eight years — and she’s on another world tour to celebrate her ninth studio album, Quantum Baby.

Despite having a mix of old fans and new, Tinashe made sure to make everyone feel special. “Houston how we feeling out there? This next song is for my day ones. Is that you?” she asked rhetorically as she pointed across the crowd and the track “Party Favors” played. Between her R&B classics and her new club-type hits, Tinashe had the Bayou City Music Center jumping and the bass had the floor vibrating.

The show featured backup dancers, stage props and an on-stage videographer who was filming a live feed to the big screen that created what looked almost like music video scenes but in real time. Trippy psychedelic visuals lit up the screen behind her throughout her show.

The party continued even when Tinashe had to step off to change or prepare for the next phase of the show, as she had a dance team that kept things rolling.

The night featured all of Tinashe’s latest hits, including “No Broke Boys,” “All my Friends” and a ton of dancing. She thanked her fans for sharing their energy with her and blew them all kisses on the way out.