Jazmine Sullivan continues to shine. The singer released her latest single, “Tragic” featuring Maxine Waters on Thursday, which she calls a continuation of the “conversation around Heaux Tales.”
As theGrio has covered, Sullivan has had quite the year so far. Released in Jan. 2021, her latest EP and first project in six years, Heaux Tales dropped to critical acclaim and significant commercial success.
Since then, she’s made various appearances performing at the NAACP Image Awards and singing the national anthem alongside Eric Church before the Super Bowl. It looks like she plans on continuing to feed her fans, however, as she already has released a new song mere months after the EP.
“Tragic” is a laid-back ballad, with the singer repeatedly singing that she’s, “reclaiming her time.” The lyrics of the chorus include, “Who was lying when they told you you was all that? /And we had it /Just another good laugh in our group chat (Just another, just another) /Reclaim, reclaim, reclaim, reclaimin’ my time.”
The song kicks off with audio of Waters saying, “reclaiming my time,” before repeating it on a loop as the beat comes in smoothly. This audio comes from her viral moment from 2017 in which she famously interrupted the former Treasury Secretary, Steve Mnuchin.
The clip almost immediately took off, with women all across social media praising “Auntie” Maxine for taking up space that is rightfully hers. The phrase has become a mainstay in the zeitgeist, with people using it as a hashtag, in social media captions, and was even sampled in a gospel-style song by Mykal Kilgore. Now, the phrase gets a whole new meaning in Sullivan’s song, with her using it to get over an old flame.
Earlier this week, the singer teased her new single with an Instagram video of her chatting with her friends, including singer Ari Lennox. Speaking of sex, a heavy theme on her latest EP, the singer and her friends laugh and share stories of some of their most interesting encounters.
The singer wrote in the caption of the video, “Pillow Talk, continuing the conversation around Heaux Tales with some of my dope friends, old and new. Check out the first part of our discussion here. My new single “Tragic” out June 24.”
Sullivan recently covered Essence magazine, which featured a conversation between the singer and mogul Issa Rae. While for months she has specifically referred to her latest project as an EP, she shared in the interview, “It’s an EP, but it’s changing for me now. I feel like now it’s more of a project or an album, just based on the effect it’s having on women.
She added, “I called it an EP at first because I felt like it was too short. I had been away for six years. I was like, I can’t come in and just call it an album. But from the response—what it has turned into for women and what it’s doing for women, how it’s empowering them—it’s like an album.”
Jazmine is nominated for Album of the Year at this year’s BET Awards, which are set to air this Sunday at 8 p.m.
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