Teedra Moses Clarifies “Be Your Girl” Backstory, Announces New Three-Part EP
Teedra Moses is clearing the air and spilling the tea in honor of the 20th anniversary of her debut album, Complex Simplicity.
The beloved songstress pulled up VIBE’s Los Angeles studio to perform “Backstroke,” from her first critically acclaimed, “cult classic” LP and another from the new three-part EP she’s dropping in 2025. The term “cult classic” is one that Moses embraces with a spirit of gratitude.
“I do believe that it is a cult classic, not because I’m saying it myself, because it’s just been reiterated to me in so many different ways and so many conversations and so many different actions of people. I do believe that the good brother Kaytranada remixing it definitely brought an attention to it later on when the album was still growing and still coming along,” she gushed during our sit-down when referring to the 2018 remix that the Grammy-winning producer created.
“His attention to the remix of ‘Be Your Girl‘ just put it on a different stage and started to bring it towards the ears of people that never heard it before and I now have really, really young people that weren’t born when the album came out that come to me and tell me how much they love the album,” Moses added.
In addition to speaking on the true backstory of the hit record—which is about Nas as Sincere in Belly— she clarified that she wasn’t after someone else’s man. “When I wrote that song, I did not know if he was with his ex-wife or not. I had no clue. That’s not even my way of being. I didn’t know him,” she said. “He didn’t know me. Me and Nas met years later, and we laughed about it. It wasn’t that. It was just like I had the same crush everybody else had on Nas.”
When speaking on the milestone anniversary of her debut, Moses confessed to be filled with nothing but “extreme gratitude.”
“More than anything, in retrospect, [I’ve learned] about myself as I’ve grown in these 20 years [and am] really taking in the love that people have given me, the support I’ve had in these 20 years. How I feel is just extreme gratitude because I was at a certain place at that time and I have victoriously gotten to this place where I am now in 20 years. I just have so much gratitude for the people that were involved, for the music, everything. I’m just grateful. That’s how it feels. I feel grateful to celebrate 20 years of Complex Simplicity,” she explained.
She later shared that the biggest lesson she’s learned as an independent artist over the past two decades was “to stay the course, persevere, continue on, and stick to what you’re doing.”
Moses added, “Don’t switch up because it might not seem like it’s working or because something someone else is doing is working. Just kind of stick to your guns and stay the course.”
The singer does have new music coming in 2025 in the form of a three-part EP titled The Bullsh*t.
“With All My Heart,” one of the records she performed for VIBE’s V Sessions, will appear in the forthcoming project. Check it out above.
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