Tink’s time is now, and she’s embracing the journey it took her to get here.
When the Chicago native first immersed herself in the music scene just over a decade ago, she used her gifts to empower fans — fast-forward to now, and nothing has changed. Despite previously being caught up in a record deal that didn’t fit her, Tink didn’t allow it to taint her outlook on her craft. Instead, she went inward, and she has continued to come out victoriously.
“I feel really accomplished because I have been signed before and I went through a period of time where I had to take a break from music and kind of start from ground zero again,” she said in an interview with Blavity. “So to get to this point, it just means a lot to me that I was able to kind of stand on my own and just come back to my roots.”
As a 100% independent artist, Tink understands the value of hard work and relies on her intuition and discernment to call the shots as the boss lady. Her belief in herself has not only led to her recent Winter’s Diary 5 project, now available on all major digital streaming platforms, but it’s also the reason that she’s currently touring as an opening act for Jhene Aiko’s The Magic Hour Tour.
“I feel like being independent is a lot of hard work for me; with just being a woman in general, we have a lot of work to do, and we have to work twice as hard for respect,” Tink explained. “So, being independent, I’m on top of my game, I have to be on top of my contracts, my team. … I’m really paying out of pocket to be on tour. There’s a lot of responsibility and a lot of focus that goes into this because I don’t have a major label backing me, I don’t have like a cushion to fall on if I need some expenses. I have a partnership with Empire and what they do is kind of just promote the music. Ninety percent of everything I’m doing is coming out of pocket, so it just takes a real great deal of my focus.”
To get to this point, however, took a lot of work — the singer said it meant that she could no longer escape her feelings after walking away from her record deal.
“For me, every day in 2017, I took a lot of time to myself where I actually kind of shut the world out. So I wasn’t on social media, I wasn’t on my Instagram for about a year, I just had to go back home with myself, and I feel like I had to do a lot of soul-searching, a lot of rebranding,” she said. “I had to just think about what I wanted to give to the world so that I could really put my heart back into the music.”
The release of one of her biggest hits, “Treat Me Like Somebody,” did not initially bring in profit, as it was released on SoundCloud as part of her mixtape Winter’s Diary 2 .
“As for ‘Treat Me Like Somebody,’ that song kind of almost carried my career. I feel like a lot of my older songs are still relevant, and I didn’t really have the chance to give them the proper push.”
During the Atlanta leg of The Magic Hour Tour , Tink fans sang those same songs word for word, bar for bar, and it is something that she does not take lightly at all.
“I thank God for those records, even though they may not have had a million-dollar budget or a proper rollout, even though I wasn’t collecting money off of them, I’m able to perform them now and I’m kind of reaping the benefits later, so it all worked out. I’d say I’m very grateful for those records because, again, they kind of carry my show. Performing ‘Treat Me Like Somebody’ is always a surreal moment, when that song starts and fans hear that guitar.”
Tink added, “I never really gave up on my music or those songs. I did a lot of those videos with no money. I’m kind of making things happen without any help or resources, and people really just felt the message in that song, so I’m just grateful. You never know how a song is gonna work. It can pop 10 years later, you just never know.”
With the recent release of Winter’s Diary 5 , Tink is excited to continue using the music to elevate her life. When the album released in July, it provided fans with yet another layer of the woman Tink continues to evolve into.
“It’s been eight years since I’ve dropped a Winter’s Diary project, so I think I just have to say, first, it’s been a lot of growing. I guess my last Winter’s Diary I was 22 and now I’m 29. I feel like I had to do a lot of learning. With my experiences as a woman, I’m able to kind of dig a little deeper and see what I’ve gone through in my relationships, and I think that’s the biggest change for me. I wanted this album to feel kinda like a progression from being a young girl and growing into a lady.”
As she continues on The Magic Hour Tour, Tink is leaning into what that looks like for her both on a personal and professional front.
“The ‘magic hour,’ to me, is the moment you can tap into your feelings and emotions without being judged or criticized for any of it,” she said. “I feel like every night on tour, we see the crowd kind of getting their life. I mean, you see women who are crying and women that are screaming when they release things in the air. Even with Jhene being the headliner, there were so many emotions. People came to the concert for just like a release, and it was very girl-friendly. So we learn now all of our emotions in the building, so the magic hour is when you just get to be free.”
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