walking upstream…
Tinashe
sourcesThe FADER — Things Have Changed · The FADER — My First Time · Billboard — The School of Janet Jackson · Billboard — Tinashe Still Can't Believe Her 2016 Collab With Britney Spears Happened (first CD owned, 'Slumber Party' collaboration) · That Grape Juice — Tinashe Talks New Music, Success, & Being Inspired by Janet Jackson & Beyonce (Janet as 'number one' performance inspiration) · The Cut — Tinashe on 'Quantum Baby' Album & 'Nasty''s Viral Success (bio background, Janet Jackson tour mashup of 'Nasty')
In the Kachingwe household outside Lexington, Kentucky, a one-year-old was already performing for the room, mimicking whatever her Zimbabwean father and Iowan mother put on: Sade, Michael Jackson, Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston. Trained in jazz, ballet, tap, and hip-hop from age four, she acted in film and TV as a child, toured arenas with a teen girl group as a teenager, then taught herself production and self-released three mixtapes that established her as a fixture of early-2010s alternative R&B. She broke through nationally in 2014 with "Aquarius" and "2 On," then a decade later scored her biggest hit yet with the viral "Nasty." Across it all, she has pointed to the same three pop titans as her formative "Big Three": Janet Jackson, Britney Spears, and Christina Aguilera — a trio she found before she ever had a career of her own to measure them against.
the sound in question
2014
2 OnTinashe
walk the tributaries ↓
Janet Jackson1980s–90s · R&B / Pop / Dance-pop / New jack swing
At seven, Tinashe already knew her parents' Janet Jackson records; a few years later she started digging on her own, working backward through albums older than what got played in the house. "I'd watch all her concert DVDs, try to learn the choreography," she said — homework nobody assigned. Years later, on tour in China, she watched the woman she'd once mimicked in her bedroom take the stage and remix her own 1986 hit "Nasty" into Tinashe's 2024 song of the same name. Tinashe met her afterward and told her, simply, that she was a huge inspiration.
listen: upstream & heresource: Billboard — Tinashe Talks Summer of 'Nasty,' Feeling Validated & If She'd Want to Star in the Britney Spears Biopic ('Big Three,' Janet Jackson sample confirmation) ↗
1986
Funny How Time Flies (When You're Having Fun)Janet Jackson
2014
How Many TimesTinashe
listen forJanet Jackson's "Funny How Time Flies (When You're Having Fun)," from 1986's Control, rides a slow, stop-and-go instrumental that keeps cutting the groove short of a full downbeat. Tinashe's 2014 "How Many Times," featuring the rapper Future, samples that same instrumental directly, and its chorus — asking "how many times can we make love in one night?" — reproduces the same halting, breath-catching vocal pattern over it. Listen for the shared trick: neither song lets the rhythm resolve cleanly, so the vocal has to punctuate the silence itself.
Britney Spears1990s–2000s · Teen pop / Dance-pop / Pop
Around eight, Tinashe's ambition had a name attached: be famous by sixteen, "like Britney Spears." She missed that deadline, she says, but the fandom never dimmed — Britney's debut, "…Baby One More Time," was the first CD she ever owned, and by 2016 the two were shooting a music video together for a re-recorded "Slumber Party." "It still feels really surreal just to be able to work with somebody that you've idolized your entire life," Tinashe told talk-show host Kelly Clarkson, recalling how Britney's "star power" switched on the moment the camera rolled.
listen: upstream & heresource: Billboard — Tinashe Talks Summer of 'Nasty,' Feeling Validated & If She'd Want to Star in the Britney Spears Biopic ('Big Three,' Janet Jackson sample confirmation) ↗
2008
BlurBritney Spears
2011
Can't Say NoTinashe
listen forTinashe's first-ever released song, 2011's "Can't Say No," isn't just Britney-adjacent — it's recorded directly over the official instrumental to "Blur," a deep cut from 2008's Circus. "I used Britney Spears' 'Blur' instrumental and wrote my own song over it," she said. Play them back to back and the debt is literal: the same skittering low end and stuttering hi-hats sit under both vocals, with Tinashe's teenage voice testing itself against a beat she didn't build.
Christina Aguilera2000s · Pop / R&B / Soul
At seven, before her parents ever picked an artist for her, Tinashe picked one herself. Christina Aguilera's Back to Basics tour was her first paid concert, and the singer — barely out of her teens, already able to out-sing whoever shared the bill — became, in Tinashe's word, a "hero." "Her and Britney were absolute queens when I was younger," she said in 2024, still visibly starstruck that Aguilera had set her own dance video to Tinashe's single "Nasty." Grouped with Britney and Janet as her self-described "Big Three," Aguilera is the one Tinashe found without any help.
listen: upstream & heresource: Billboard — Tinashe Recalls Feeling Starstruck When Christina Aguilera Used 'Nasty' in a Video ↗
2002
DirrtyChristina Aguilera
2018
Throw a FitTinashe
listen forNo confirmed sample or cover ties a specific Aguilera record to a specific Tinashe one — this connection is documented as testimony, not as sound you can point to. But the instinct Tinashe cites carries over: Aguilera's 2002 "Dirrty" turns explicit sexuality into a blunt, percussive dare, riding a hard club beat instead of a ballad showcase. Tinashe's 2018 "Throw a Fit" works the same way — confrontational, dance-floor-first sexuality delivered plainly, with nothing standing between the words and the beat.