The half-decade wait for new Teyana Taylor music is over. The R&B star and multi-hyphenate entertainer has released “Long Time,” the lead single from her first album in five years, Escape Room, along with a music video.
Escape Room follows 2020’s The Album, a release that, per Pitchfork, “deftly recontextualizes classic R&B” and “represents the fierce persona she has honed in public.” Taylor teased Escape Room last week with a trailer for the album’s accompanying short film co-starring Lakeith Stanfield and Aaron Pierre. Taylor wrote, directed, and produced the film in cooperation with her all-female production company the Aunties.
The Escape Room film is billed as a visual representation of the album and an “enigmatic post-apocalyptic/futuristic, noir romance thriller.” In keeping with Taylor’s new music, it traces a journey through the darkness brought on by many kinds of heartbreak into the lightness of healing. It begins with Taylor and Stanfield at the altar exchanging vows, then follows them into dark situations represented by escape room scenarios. Eventually she links up romantically with Pierre in a steamy scene that has fueled rumors of a real-life romance with the actor. In a voiceover, she says, “The hard part isn’t losing you; it’s losing the version of me I left behind.”
The return to music follows a successful pivot to acting over the past half-decade. Taylor’s many upcoming high-profile projects include Tyler Perry’s Straw, streaming via Netflix starting this Friday, June 6. Later this year she’ll star opposite Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio Del Toro, and Sean Penn in One Battle After Another, the latest full-length theatrical release from auteurist filmmaker Paul Thomas Anderson. She’s also set to join Matt Damon and Ben Affleck in The Rip on Netflix and is part of Ryan Murphy’s All’s Fair alongside Kim Kardashian, Naomi Watts, Glenn Close, and Sarah Paulson.
Listen to Teyana Taylor’s “Long Time” now.
