Teyana Taylor / K.T.S.E.


The career of Harlem singer, actress, dancer and model Teyana Taylor has long been linked to Kanye West. Few remember or know that Taylor did chorus on two songs from 'My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy', the West 2010 masterpiece, specifically on 'Dark Fantasy' and 'Hell of a Life', and also on G.O.O.O.D. Music's 'Cruel Summer' compilation, Kanye's label, released in 2013. A year earlier, Taylor had signed with this label, and a year later, released through him his debut, 'VII'.
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But it would be foolish to deny that few knew of Taylor's existence before starred in Kanye West's 'Fade' video clip, premiered in August 2016 and in which, making use of her athletic physical form, the artist performed an impressive choreography in the style of 'Flashdance' in a gymnasium (and in the memorable last scene, she became a feline). The video won the award for Best Choreography at the MTV Video Music Awards 2017, but above all served as a vehicle to expand the figure of an artist with diverse talents, but above all gifted with a portentous voice, which deserved a record that lived up to its capabilities to earn its small place in the history of black music. That record is 'K.T.S.E.'. ("keep that same energy").
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Produced by a Kanye West that this year cannot stop creating, 'K.T.S.E.' is a classic R&B album, with the difference that now it's mostly samples of old songs and not a real band that provide the musical background. It's Kanye West's favourite technique, which has led him to produce hip-hop masterpieces like 'Late Registration' or wonderful songs for other artists like Janet Jackson's 'I Want You', which, as we said , looks like the best song on the album, 'Gonna Love Me'. Through a sample of The Delfonics, 'Gonna Love Me' is a true delicacy, a song that is also very exciting because of its portrait of the insecurities that arise in a relationship, with a Teyana who asks herself: "why is it so difficult to maintain contact / when we are lying side by side?".
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The evils of love, sex and the strength to overcome life's challenges occupy the content of Taylor's lyrics, who starts the album with the curious play on words "I got a man, but I got no manners", in a 'No Manners' that combines the sample of a voice distorted to the ghostly with a beautiful arrangement of strings. The artist refers of course to her husband, the basketball player Iman Shumpert, to whom she later proposes to make a trio with a woman in the intriguing '3W' ("three way"), because she knows he wants it and "three heads are better than one".It's the biggest obscenity (if you can call it that) of an album that always keeps the "forms" when it comes to music, being elegant even when Teyana asks her lover in 'Hurry' to keep her gaze on her ass and "grab it with her hands" if she "likes what she sees" (while Kanye rapes about wanting to be her "daddy").
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Really, apart from the strange house track that closes the album, 'WTP' ("work this pussy"), which features the collaboration of Mykki Blanco and is inspired by 'Paris Is Burning', the tracks played by 'Gonna Love Me' produce the best songs on 'K.T.S.E.'. In 'Issues / Hold On', which uses a fragment of GQ's 'I Do Love You', Teyana openly exposes her insecurities, begging her lover who repeats that he loves her, because she needs that "security from time to time", even coming to recognize "I don't care if you lie to me, since there's not much to encourage me these days", or to plunge into some moment of paranoia ("don't give me reasons to look at your phone"). The song is another wonderful West production that fuses a very Al Green background with the effect of a laser gun. On paper it shouldn't work, but it does, and in the voice of Taylor, who looks like the goddaughter of Whitney Houston and Brandy, even more so.
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But the biggest surprise left by 'K.T.S.E.' towards the end of this 8-track, 20-minute album is 'Rose in Harlem', a majestic track that turns The Stylistics' classic 'Because I Loved You Girl' into a touching letter from Teyana to her past self in her native Harlem. Despite her message "don't trust anyone", 'Rose in Harlem' is an emotional, nostalgic song, in which Taylor also leaves a vocal interpretation worthy of the greats. It is perhaps also the song that best represents an artist who is exactly that, a "rose" from Harlem prepared, at last, to become the star that clearly has always deserved to be.
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Rating: 8/10
. The best: 'Gonna Love Me', 'Issues / Hold On', 'Rose in Harlem'
You'll like it if you like: the R&B, especially the classic
Listen to him: Spotify
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