Teyana Taylor review – jaw-dropping farewell from singer leaving too soon

At 31, Teyana Taylor is one of pop’s youngest retirees. In late 2020, the Harlem-born singer and dancer announced that she was stepping back from the music industry, worn down by nearly 15 years of feeling undervalued by her record labels – first Pharrell’s Interscope imprint Star Trak, and later Kanye West’s record label Good Music. Two years later, Taylor is finally bringing her farewell tour – The Last Rose Petal 2 – to London. For the sold-out audience packed into Brixton Academy on Sunday night, it’s less a reason to commiserate than an opportunity to celebrate an artist who, in spite of everything, has still managed to release two of the best R&B albums in recent memory – the West-produced KTSE from 2018 and 2020’s The Album.

The Last Rose Petal is a noticeably higher-budget show than Taylor’s previous tours, but the new bells and whistles – a neon sign, large screens, multiple costume changes – can’t help but feel superfluous, simply because Taylor herself is a true marvel of a performer. She is not a singer who has been trained to dance, but an accomplished dancer who also happens to wield a gorgeous, pathos-drenched rasp of a voice. (Watch West’s video for Fade for an example of Taylor’s remarkable athletic prowess.) Watching her jump, pop and bound across the stage without missing a note – as during Rose in Harlem, the show’s blistering, anarchic finale – is genuinely jaw-dropping.

It takes a beat for her to get to that point, though. During the first half of the set, Taylor is barely audible above her band; the dancing, as well as the camp, Carmen Sandiego-esque outfits, are spectacular, but the entire thing feels oddly detached. Once she switches to a handheld mic halfway through, Taylor instantly becomes more engaging: the full depth of her voice starts to come through, and she begins to interact more freely with the audience.

From here, she’s unstoppable, corralling her dancers like a ballroom announcer during WTP and bringing a ragged urgency to The Album cut Wrong Bitch. Before she sings Gonna Love Me, Taylor begins to cry: “Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she tells the audience over and over, receiving deafening cheers in response. It’s an emotional denouement: Taylor may have been overlooked during her all-too-short career, but to the thousands in this room, she’s an icon.