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Teyana Taylor Soundz

Seventeen tracks from a Harlem artist who has been a dancer, a choreographer, a singer, a director and a film actor, usually all at once.

Teyana Taylor

Teyana Taylor came out of Harlem and first appeared on My Super Sweet 16 before choreographing Beyoncé's "Ring the Alarm" at sixteen. She was signed to Pharrell's Star Trak, then to Kanye West's G.O.O.D. Music, and her music career has been repeatedly overshadowed by everything else she does.

She reached a much wider audience through the video for Kanye West's "Fade," in which she dances alone in a gym, and has since directed videos herself under the name Spike Tey. Her acting career, particularly in A Thousand and One, has drawn serious critical attention.

The frustration running through her music story is real: K.T.S.E., the 2018 album produced by Kanye West, was released unfinished and without her approval, and she has been candid about it.

What to listen for

"Gonna Love Me" is the essential record — built on a Delfonics sample, and one of the warmest things anyone released that year. The remix here adds Ghostface Killah, Method Man and Raekwon, which makes it a Wu-Tang record and a Harlem record at once.

"Rose In Harlem" is the most autobiographical and probably her best piece of writing.

"We Got Love" with Ms. Lauryn Hill is the collaboration that matters most — Hill appears on very little, and her presence is a genuine endorsement.

"Made It" and "Issues/Hold On" are from K.T.S.E. and show what that record could have been with more time.

"Hurry" with Kanye West and "To The World" represent the G.O.O.D. Music era, and "Do Not Disturb" and "Us vs. The World" the Chris Brown-adjacent chapter.

"Dreams" and "In The Air" are the deeper cuts, and "Machine" with the virtual artist Miquela is the strangest credit here.

Go deeper

The Album (2020) is the fullest statement and the one she had most control over.

Watch A Thousand and One (2023) — her performance is extraordinary and won significant awards attention.

For the Harlem soul lineage: Mary J. Blige is the obvious predecessor, and the sample sources — The Delfonics, Philadelphia soul generally — are the real inheritance.

A last point about the multi-hyphenate problem. Being genuinely excellent at four things means being taken slightly less seriously at each of them, and Teyana Taylor's music has consistently been treated as the side project of a dancer, a director or an actor. The catalogue does not support that reading. Play The Album whole and the songwriting stands up entirely on its own.

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