Tinashe Says We Need to ‘Abolish’ All Music Genres

It appears that Tinashe is favoring transparency these days, at least in terms of her political and cultural beliefs. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, the singer declared that she believes we need to put an end to genres because many, like urban, R&B, and rap, were founded on the basis of race.

“I’m going to go as far as to say we need to abolish genres in general,” she said when asked if the idea of musical genres can be repaired. “I think that the way that many of them came to be and have continued to progress is very much so based on race and the segregation of music based on race.”

She continued, “By putting artists either in an urban category or an R&B category or rap category…these really general umbrellas that we use to define different genres—it creates a huge sense of isolation for the creative when they’re trying to experiment, especially for creatives that don’t necessarily feel like they fall into one of the genres, which was my experience.”

Tinashe also described her own experience as a major label R&B artist. “When I first came on the scene, I felt a real aversion to being labeled as like a new R&B girl. Not because I didn’t love R&B, but because I could see, especially within my own label, how different the team operated that was marketing [and] pushing the urban department at the company, and how it was not the same department that was pushing the pop act,” she explained. “Those were the stages I wanted. That was the radio station I wanted. I always saw myself as like a Z100 artist. I always thought that my material and my music and my art fit into that category already.”