Tinashe and Ricky Reed Unpack West Coast Influences, Hidden Ad-Libs on ‘Nasty’ for Variety’s Behind the Song

Long before Tinashe‘s “Nasty” spawned the catch phrase of the summer, (“Is somebody gonna match my freak?”) the idea for earworm come through a freestyle on the way to a recording session with Ricky Reed.

“I’d just gotten this necklace that said ‘Nasty,’ because I have this nickname Nasty Nashe,” the singer tells Variety in Behind the Song. “So I had in my mind, I wanted to write a song… I was driving over, I was freestyling in my car. Kind of came up with the initial lines, ‘Is somebody gonna match my freak? I’ve been a nasty girl,’ which kind of stuck. Sounded right.”

Tinashe’s intuition was right — the lyrics, paired with an amalgamation of R&B and hip-hop, gave way to “Nasty,” Tinashe’s most prominent hit since 2014’s “2 On” (peaked at No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100). The song is also the lead single for her upcoming “Quantum Baby” album, due Aug. 16.

“We kind of started with a kick and a snare,” Tinashe recalls in conversation with Reed. He adds, “I was trying to serve things to [Tinashe] that I thought made sense… I kept realizing every time, like, ‘It’s gotta be a little weirder!’ It’s gotta be a little stranger. It was probably two or three sessions of her being like, ‘Give me the freaky shit!'”

The song is also a first hit for Reed’s Nice Life Recording Company, which prides itself on fostering a long-view approach to artists’ careers. Tinashe is now an independent artist, but she was formerly with RCA.

“Nasty” was released in April and quickly took off on TikTok when users began pairing the song’s bumping beats with sultry and clean-cut dance moves, much like Tinashe has done in her live performance routines.

“When I’m in the studio, I’m always considering how I’m going to dance to a song, because dance is so important to me as an artist,” Tinashe said. “I think that this song has a particular BPM, a particular cadence, a particular attitude that I always like to embody on stage.”