American singer-songwriter Tinashe Jorgensen Kachingwe, known as Tinashe, is a songbird preening herself for yet another glorious flight with her sixth studio album BB/ANG3L, slated for release this coming September. After a relatively quiet first half of the year, she released ‘Talk to Me Nice’ in late July to whet the eardrums of her followers. Her latest single, ‘Needs’, is the next that her last song promised.
The ‘2 On’ hitmaker’s newest offering is a trap-influenced take on lo-fi R&B and pop, leaning on a deep set, heavy bass and understated sprinkles of sporadic hi-hats.
Thematically, ‘Needs’ is a feminine interpretation of a woman’s wildest sexual fantasies intertwined with her desires for a lavish lifestyle. It’s a motor-mouthed power anthem about what it means to have a list of things to check off in a relationship, but that’s where the exchange ends. With that considered, ‘Needs’ comes off as one-sided.
For example, body positivity pokes its head through the shallow waters of the lyricism (“Nice and clean / A1 body, but I talk real mean (So mean)”), but there’s little to no evidence in the songwriting that she’s willing to go beyond for what’s in it for her love interest. At the height of the song, ‘Needs’ is a hedonistic guilty pleasure for a damned soul, and at its lowest, it’s a woeful picture of how skewed hookup culture is when it comes to determining value.
The songwriting, although unwittingly, portrays Kachingwe as a domineering diva with a hummingbird’s voice, a frightening contrast that isn’t all too rare. One only has to dig deeper, and there’s Ariana Grande and Ari Lennox, who play those roles equally well.
The song showcases a side that purports to be about women empowerment but is quite the opposite, such as “I can’t be ya one and only / Not today / Tell that girl that I got my bands up” and “Heard she a fan, yeah / Come and get your man”. All in all, ‘Needs’ frames the thirty-year-old as a utilitarian problem solver when it comes to satisfying her desires – that the cost means nothing to her, even if it’s the pieces of another woman’s heart simply because she’s richer and has millions of followers dancing along to her music.
‘Needs’ is not a sonic misfire or even a production disaster. Yet, it’s a song that is bound to leave one scratching their head as to what lengths a lady who wants her needs satisfied would go to, even if it means causing turmoil along the way. Doing all this with the voice of a canary.
