At 31, Teyana Taylor is certainly one of pop’s youngest retirees. In late 2020, the Harlem-born singer and dancer introduced that she was stepping again from the music trade, worn down by practically 15 years of feeling undervalued by her document labels – first Pharrell’s Interscope imprint Star Trak, and later Kanye West’s document label Good Music. Two years later, Taylor is lastly bringing her farewell tour – The Final Rose Petal 2 – to London. For the sold-out viewers packed into Brixton Academy on Sunday evening, it’s much less a cause to commiserate than a possibility to have fun an artist who, after all, has nonetheless managed to launch two of the perfect R&B albums in current reminiscence – the West-produced KTSE from 2018 and 2020’s The Album.
The Final Rose Petal is a noticeably higher-budget present than Taylor’s earlier excursions, however the brand new bells and whistles – a neon signal, massive screens, a number of costume adjustments – can’t assist however really feel superfluous, just because Taylor herself is a real marvel of a performer. She is just not a singer who has been educated to bop, however an completed dancer who additionally occurs to wield a stunning, pathos-drenched rasp of a voice. (Watch West’s video for Fade for an instance of Taylor’s exceptional athletic prowess.) Watching her bounce, pop and certain throughout the stage with out lacking a word – as throughout Rose in Harlem, the present’s blistering, anarchic finale – is genuinely jaw-dropping.
It takes a beat for her to get to that time, although. In the course of the first half of the set, Taylor is barely audible above her band; the dancing, in addition to the camp, Carmen Sandiego-esque outfits, are spectacular, however the whole factor feels oddly indifferent. As soon as she switches to a handheld mic midway by, Taylor immediately turns into extra partaking: the total depth of her voice begins to come back by, and she or he begins to work together extra freely with the viewers.
From right here, she’s unstoppable, corralling her dancers like a ballroom announcer throughout WTP and bringing a ragged urgency to The Album lower Fallacious Bitch. Earlier than she sings Gonna Love Me, Taylor begins to cry: “Thanks, thanks, thanks,” she tells the viewers time and again, receiving deafening cheers in response. It’s an emotional denouement: Taylor might have been missed throughout her all-too-short profession, however to the hundreds on this room, she’s an icon.
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