by: Alana Brown-Davis
Teyana Taylor released her fourth studio album ‘Escape Room’ on August 22nd. It is her first major release in five years after ‘The Album’ in 2020. On a pretty stacked Friday of album releases, Taylor prepared her listeners well in advance. This summer, Taylor released ‘Bed of Roses’ the leading track from ‘Escape Room’.
‘Escape Room’ tells a story and although many artists use that as the byline of their work, Taylor’s album is literally that. The project operates as a tale of heartbreak, healing and all that comes in between. Taylor picked a great selection of women luminaries to lead the album forward. This included Taraji P. Henson, Sarah Paulson, La La Anthony, Niecy Nash, Jodie Turner Smith, Issa Rae, Kerry Washington, and Regina King. Musical features on the album hint at great things to come with Jill Scott, Lucky Dae, Tyla, and Kaytranada appearing on several tracks.
The narrations on ‘Escape Room’ act as a primer for what’s to come, an idea reminiscent of Jazmine Sullivan on her ‘Heaux Tales’ album. In the manner of a novel, its these narrations that act as the moment when you flip a page into a new chapter. Despite the album being laden with interludes, its musical content is still great. On the Kaytranada joint ‘Open Invite’ which sampled Missy Elliot’s ‘Beep My 911’, the song gives a house inflected color to the lush R&B album. Like any song that he features on, the passionate croons of Lucky Daye on ‘Hard Part’. ‘Pum Pum Jump’ is filled with fierce temptation which is accented by Jill Scott’s spoken word portion towards the end and Tyla’s inflections.
Escape Room is Another Masterpiece by Taylor
‘Escape Room’ and its structure makes you want to pause and really listen to its content. It’s a 22 track album, but that’s not in an effort by Taylor to hike up streaming numbers. She wants us to listen to what each person on this album can offer us. In the days of cash grab hype-driven music, artistic choices like this are important to the scene.
Along with the release of her new project, she also dropped a short film with the same title.