Listen: Tinashe ft Devonte Hynes – "Bet"

30 September 2014, 07:57 | Written by Maya Hambro

(Tracks)

(Tinashe)

It wouldn’t be unfair to begin worrying that the effusively productive Dev Hynes may soon run out of burgeoning divas to work with. In recent weeks he’s been announced as a collaborator on Jessie Ware’s new album, and just the other day he re-worked the pop track of the year: Sia’s magnificent “Chandelier”. Thankfully he shows no signs of slowing, and we demanding listeners have been treated to another piece of Hynes-related magic, this time a co-write with up and coming RnB chanteuse Tinashe, “Bet”. Taken off her highly anticipated debut LP Aquarius, it’s a more than adequate follow-up to the monster hit that broke her (both over here and in the US) “2 On”.

The cut sits somewhere in the Frank Ocean school of song writing – it may only be five minutes or so, but it’s not far (stylistically) from his magnum opus of a track “Pyramids” – they share a husky vocal, counter-intuitively disturbed rhythms and a killer guitar solo. But where “Pyramids” favoured the kind of simplicity that Hynes does so well, albeit it in his own idiosyncratic way, “Bet” revels in uncharacteristically complex production: reverb-heavy vocal samples layer under Tinashe’s yearning timbre, almost drowning the trap beat that claws at the underside, adding a frenetic, stuttering edge to the whole shebang.

It’s Tinashe’s fiercest and most intriguing piece of work thus far – she’s previously remained in the shade of other, more experimental RnB singers: lacking the emotive prowess of Jhene Aiko, and the sultry, borderline lewd sexuality of Miguel or the Weeknd. “Bet” lands a striking blow to anyone who’d care to question her ability, and bodes frighteningly well for the future. If Aqurius can maintain this level of quality we might well be seeing her at the game-changer end of those ‘Best of 2014’ lists.