This story appears in i-D issue 375, on newsstands September 22. Sign up to the i-D newsletter to be the first to see the new issue.
written by LAKIN IMANI STARLING
photography JASON NOCITO
styling BECKY AKINYODE
Teyana Taylor is free now—free from feeling unprotected, unheard, and having to fight for her career. For the past few years, she has had to navigate hurdles, personal and professional, requiring unshakable faith and grit. But the result is an electric surge of uncontainable energy, seeing the 34-year-old American star on the cusp of her biggest year yet.
How big? This year, Taylor stars in all the hottest-tipped movies and TV shows: Tyler Perry’s Straw, alongside Taraji P. Henson; Ryan Murphy’s All is Fair, alongside Kim Kardashian, Naomi Watts, and Glenn Close; and Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another, alongside Leonardo DiCaprio, Sean Penn, and Benicio del Toro. In the PTA film, she plays Perfidia, a pregnant ex-revolutionary on a mission to save her daughter with Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio). The trailer’s opening scene, one of the first glimpses we get of Perfidia, is striking: She stands in a field, heavily pregnant, firing off a thunderous machine gun.
Taylor is a person who feels everything. She describes her character in the film as “a very complex, beautiful, and selfish woman in survival mode who was driven to the edge after being ignored during postpartum.” As a mother, she connects to Perfidia’s strength. “When you’re strong, you don’t get no compassion. They don’t see you, they don’t hear you,” she says. “I was Perfidia at a time when I needed to be more selfish, when I needed to stop giving grace to people. I needed to stop protecting people.” The intensity of the experience forced Taylor even further out of her comfort zone, for the better.
As if starring in a cinematic marvel didn’t keep her busy enough, she came out of musical “retirement” this August, dropping Escape Room, an ambitious 22-track visual album. It’s her first music project since announcing the end of her musical career in 2020.
“I’m free from what was weighing on me. Free of worry and pain,” she says resolutely, her gaze fixed on me through a video call she’s taking from an LA restaurant, as we get deep into her new chapter. This isn’t simply freedom, though. In the words of Toni Morrison: Freeing yourself is one thing. Claiming ownership of that freed self is another.
“I can do everything … and I did everything I said I would do—but in divine time.”
teyana taylor
When we speak, Taylor is warm and her aura is light as she reflects on how things are aligning in her life—a stark contrast to the past five years, characterised by an unsuccessful marriage and a stifling record deal. In that time, she has seized control, shifting from a career marked by self-sacrifice to self-prioritisation, changing everything from her marital status (going through a very public divorce) to her approach to art. Choosing herself made her return to music even more rewarding. “Once you take a woman out of survival mode, she will blossom, and I feel like I’ve blossomed out loud into the woman that I’ve always been versus being blocked by rain and thunder,” she reflects. “Now, it’s just clear skies. That’s what Escape Room represents. I don’t have to be trapped in one room.”
Escape Room moves through the full spectrum of Taylor’s heart, from shadowy lows to vibrant highs. There are achy ballads and heated grooves for slow dancing and crying in the club. Each track is ushered in by interludes narrated by iconic women––including Regina King, Kerry Washington, and Sarah Paulson––who, Taylor says, “have been through it all.” She brings the depths of postnatal depression, divorce, and everything she’s escaped from to reach this point.
Without naming names, she lays out the experience of her divorce in a confessional arc that starts with heartbreak, stumbles into a dizzying rebound era, and ends with her resting in the bloom of something new. “I call it my ombre album,” she smiles. “It’s for lover girls. Being able to take in new love, you start to feel beautiful and seen again. Allowing somebody to kiss your wounds.” It’s been a long journey. In 2018, Taylor thought she was done with music. She had just walked away from everything she’d fought to build since the early 2000s.
The Harlem-raised artist first signed to Pharrell Williams’ label Star Trek Enterprises in 2007 at just 15 years old. In 2009, her debut mixtape, From a Planet Called Harlem, was released, establishing her style as a blend of modern and old-school R&B with elements of hip-hop, creating a unique, soulful sound that fast drew comparisons to the likes of Mary J. Blige. She was described as “bold” and “brash,” spinning the heads of everyone in her orbit with her singular style––from Ye (formerly Kanye West), who would become her collaborator, to Telfar Clemens, walking in his first-ever fashion show.
“Now it’s on my terms. I’m not your artist, I’m your partner.”
teyana taylor
When she abandoned it all in 2018, she was signed with G.O.O.D. Music, an imprint of Def Jam established by Ye, which she had been with since 2012. She had just released her sophomore studio album, K.T.S.E., hotly anticipated after 2014’s VII. It had, at the time, all the hype-inducing ingredients for success: produced by Ye, as a part of the “Wyoming Sessions,” following the release of Pusha T’s Daytona, Ye’s Ye, and Kids See Ghosts with Kid Cudi, and Nas’ Nasir. It featured guest appearances from Ye, Ty Dolla Sign, and Mykki Blanco, and additional production credits from Mike Dean, one of the 21st century’s most successful producers whose other credits include Beyoncé, Travis Scott, Drake, and Lana Del Rey.
Rather than the album she’d envisioned dropping, a different, shorter cut hit platforms at only 23 minutes long due to sample clearance issues and last-minute production decisions. “People were like, ‘She didn’t like her album.’ How can I not like an album that I wrote? It was more about the elements that were snatched off of it,” she remembers. The blame could be put on her label—she says she was then unaware that there would be no visuals to support the album and that samples, including Lauryn Hill’s “Lost Ones,” weren’t cleared by the label. “That’s why I felt like I was caged. My whole truth wasn’t on it. It wasn’t getting the push that it deserved,” she explains.
Her follow-up album, definitively titled The Album, was a reaction that swung wildly the other way, running at 23 tracks. She told Entertainment Weekly at the time that she was taking “full accountability, 110 percent on everything I do,” and was fixing “what didn’t work the first time, getting a better rollout, more records, longer records… just giving everybody more.” It was a critical success, featuring guest appearances from major, Hall of Fame artists—Erykah Badu, Lauryn Hill, Future, Missy Elliott, and more. Instead of sitting with her success following the release, Taylor announced her exit from music on Instagram Live. She asked Def Jam to end her contract with the plea: “I can’t let this kill me.”
“What we doing, God?” she remembers asking, when she found herself pleading to be released from her record label contract. What came back was clarity and spiritual confirmation. “I focused on what was dead smack in front of me. I wasn’t going to sit there and be upset about what’s in the past or what hurt me.” Despite her split from Ye’s imprint, she’s still with Def Jam. What’s different this time around? “Me blowing up on their ass,” Taylor says, straight like that. “Now it’s on my terms. I’m not your artist, I’m your partner.” Besides, Taylor has other options.
Independent of her career as a solo musician, Taylor had a thriving career as an internet-breaking choreographer, dancer, and director. She choreographed the video for Beyoncé’s 2006 single “Ring the Alarm,” at the age of 15, and starred as the sweat-drenched muse in Ye’s “Fade” music video, directed by Eli Russell Linnetz in 2016. She had also been directing music videos under the name “Spike Tee” and made a name for herself as an actor, starring in comedy-dramas from Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family (2011) to Craig Brewer’s Coming 2 America (2021), alongside Eddie Murphy and Wesley Snipes. When she found the spotlight again, it was by surprise.
“You can plug me in anywhere you see a socket. … I’m a universal charger baby. I got the prongs for everything,”
teyana taylor
In 2021, she unexpectedly landed the lead role in A.V. Rockwell’s A Thousand and One, released in 2023, playing Inez, a young, formerly incarcerated mother. The film asked her to tap into a visceral and soul-aching honesty. For Taylor, that was pushing on the bruise of postpartum depression, which she was experiencing after the birth of her second child with former NBA player Iman Shumpert, whom she married in 2016 and has two daughters with. “Motherhood made me tap into being a whole other beast. It was a whole different level of hustle and a whole different level of faith,” Taylor says, her fierce love for her children pouring out of her. “I got two little beings to live for. So to be stuck here sitting, being angry and hurt? No.”
The film was Taylor’s breakout moment, and she fought for every second of it. “I could take off my cape, cry, and have people clap through it. I could have a moment of weakness, and it worked. I was able to pour every single tear, every single emotion, every single bit of postpartum depression into the role. I get to use this as therapy and I get to prove a point to you motherfuckers,” she says with the fiery passion only a Sagittarius could have.
Now, as she revels in the fruits of her labour, she feels a deep sense of relief. “It’s like an exhale. Slowly, calmly, and with my eyes closed.” She pauses, halfway through a bowl of cake and ice cream—before she fires up again with her biting humour. “You can plug me in anywhere you see a socket. Best believe, that’s where I’m going to be. I’m a universal charger baby. I got the prongs for everything,” she says, half-laughing, but totally proud of the resilience she’s built up for herself.
“I can do everything,” she affirms. “I would tell myself, I’m going to be a big actress and a go-to director. And I did everything I said I would do—but in divine time. I didn’t force it.”
“When you’re strong, you don’t get no compassion.”
In the lead image TEYANA wears jacket UNDERCOVER, leggings ISSEY MIYAKE. hat BINATA MILLINERY, earring UNIFORM OBJECT, ring ITA
hair JADIS JOLIE USING AMIKA AT E.D.M.A.
makeup RAISA FLOWERS USING DANESSA MYRICKS AT E.D.M.A.
nails JUAN ALVEAR USING CND AT OPUS BEAUTY
set design ROSIE TURNBULL
props designer MARGOT DEMARCO
photography assistants DIEGO GARCIA & IAN KLINE
styling assistant CARMA FLORES
nail assistant LOUISE CORBETT
set assistants CHAZZ FOGGIE & MAX PAVLICHENKO
location INDUSTRIA NYC
production THE MORRISON GROUP
production assistants TANNAR WILLIAMS & JORDAN SANTISTEBAN
post production ASGER CARLSEN