Teyana Taylor - KTSE

The Guardian 80

Producer West melds old and new R&B with flair on the Harlem singer’s second album – and ends with a wild left turn

On each consecutive Friday, since late May, the public has been issued with a Kanye West-produced seven-track album from an artist on his GOOD Music roster. That is, until this Friday, when the clockwork-like run – which has so far included records from Nas, Pusha T, West himself and Kids See Ghosts, his collaboration with Kid Cudi – was supposed to come to an end with R&B singer Teyana Taylor’s second album. On Thursday, Kim Kardashian West tweeted that her husband was completing the record on the plane back from Paris fashion week. Friday came and went.

Eventually, the album arrived on Saturday, by then lunchtime in the UK. The tardiness felt a tad disrespectful to Taylor – who spent Friday retweeting memes about the album’s delay – especially considering that her career hinged on West’s patronage far more so than any of the other artists involved in his creative reckoning. The 27-year-old has had a meandering and slightly befuddling trajectory since she signed her first record deal in 2007. In the years since, she’s appeared as one of the spoilt teenagers on the MTV docu-series My Super Sweet 16, choreographed videos for West and Beyoncé, and, in 2014, released her debut album, a collection of slinky but safe R&B. Earlier this year, Taylor returned to reality TV with the premiere of VH1 series Teyana & Iman, which followed her and her NBA star husband, Iman Shumpert.

Related: Why hasn't Kanye West been 'cancelled'?

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