The 5 Most Surprising Things We Learned About Tinashe

With her new album Joyride due out any minute now, Tinashe is about to go from rising R&B star to B.F.D. So, it’s about time we get to know the half-Zimbabwean singer a little better. Thanks to COMPLEX, we have a peek inside Tinashe‘s private life, and some of the details are truly unexpected. Here are the five details from her cover story that surprised us:

1. She sleeps on a twin bed. 
Despite the singer’s thirst-inducing photo shoot, the article reveals Tinashe is a family-oriented homebody who still lives with her parents and two younger brothers. Even her bed doesn’t have room for a second person: she sleeps on a twin mattress in a tiny bedroom at her parents house in the suburbs of Los Angeles. As for moving out and living on her own in an L.A. mega-mansion, like most pop stars? “It’s so cliché,” says Tinashe.

2. She’s never had an easy time finding a man. 
“Nobody wanted to f**k with me,” she says of dating in high school. “As far as the guys go, nobody wanted to like me or date me. They’d talk to me in secret and then at school they’d ignore me. Literally ignore me to my face. And psychologically that messes with you. It makes you feel that you must be genuinely unattractive if this person doesn’t want anyone to know that you even talk. That’s bad.”

3. Her bedroom is her recording studio.
A desk with an iMac and ProTools — and a huge amount of talent — is about all it took for Tinashe to put out four mixtapes and two albums in about as many years. Nearly all of her music has been produced and recorded in the comfort of her own room.

4. She’s paranoid about wasting time. 
Tinashe’s work ethic is well-known in the music industry, and, she tells COMPLEX, it starts with making checklists — and she’s willing to work overtime to make sure all the boxes get checked. “I’m not a big fan of downtime,” she says. “I have too much time to think.” About what? “That I’m not doing enough. That I’m not good enough. That I’m wasting my time.”

5. She has to remind herself that she’s a good person.
The singer has a handwritten note saying, “I know I’m a good person,” taped up over her bed, along with other inspirational quotes. Why? “When I was in middle school and everybody didn’t like me, I’d wonder, ‘What am I doing wrong?’” she confesses. “Because it’s hard not to feel like it’s a reflection of what I’m doing wrong. You have to try to remember that that’s not always the case. That it’s not always a reflection on you.”

Check out a behind-the-scenes look at Tinashe’s sultry COMPLEX cover below:

(Photo: Sarah McColgan/Complex)