Teyana Taylor Finds Flame and Freedom in ‘Escape Room’
There are albums that feel like music, and there are albums that feel like memory. Teyana Taylor’s Escape Room arrives not with the urgency of sound, but with the ache of something lived through. It doesn’t knock; it appears beside you in a dimly lit room, with mascara smudged and heart still trembling. It sits with you in the mess. And then, it guides you out.
Five years after declaring The Album her final project, Taylor returns, not with a mere collection of songs, but with a full-bodied universe. Escape Room is an album, yes, but also a short film, a narrative suite, a confessional prayer whispered through headphones. It is structured like survival: nonlinear, sensual, volatile, soft.
The story begins with fire. Taraji P. Henson opens the album with narration drenched in smoke and scorched memory:
“Fire consuming the walls that we built together until one day, I stood in the ashes — alone.”
And then, “Fire Girl” erupts, where Taylor sings like someone pacing their own burning house. She is blistered, angry, unafraid to point to the wreckage and say, he did this. But even more importantly, she refuses to hand over the last unscorched part of herself.
“But you can never burn my soul, n—–a,” she seethes.
What follows is not so much a tracklist as it is a cinematic unraveling. With Lucky Daye, she sings through the denial of heartbreak in “Hard Part,” not with clean closure, but with the stutter-step of someone still bargaining with memory. In “Long Time,” she mourns not just love lost, but the time spent holding onto it past its expiration. There’s no neat narrative here, only the brutal honesty of a heart re-learning its own rhythm.
And yet, Taylor knows how to pivot. Escape Room is not a funeral, it’s a rebirth through flame. Enter Jill Scott and Tyla on “Pum Pum Jump” — a track as playful as it is powerful. Taylor croons, “You make my pum-pum jump,” with a smirk in her voice, as if to remind us (and herself) that pleasure, too, is a form of reclamation. And in “Shut Up,” she leans into the silence left behind by someone who once had too much to say, now replaced by her own knowing.
As the story progresses, Tasha Smith, Niecey Nash, Issa Rae, Kerry Washington, Regina King, and more appear not as background voices, but as spirit guides. The narration is cinematic, but it never overshadows. These women, these aunties in spirit, help Taylor articulate what many of us can’t: how even our most personal wounds can be made communal. How healing is not just an inward thing, but something that echoes across generations.
Then, there’s “Back to Life,” where betrayal is less an event and more a haunting.
“You said that you would love me ’til you die / But I guess love must be a lie.”
The line lands not with melodrama, but with the quiet devastation of someone who’s said it out loud for the first time. It is grief, framed in melody.
But Taylor doesn’t stay in the dark. Not entirely. Romance re-enters, quietly, like a hand offered across a bed on “Bed of Roses” and “In Your Skin.” These songs are not declarations of new love, but questions whispered into its shoulder. Can this be safe? Can this be real? Can I trust softness again?
She ends with “Always,” a sparse, acoustic ballad that features her daughters, Junie and Rue. It’s not a coda, but a benediction. A reminder that even when everything else burns down, some loves remain unshakable.
The project is paired with a short film also titled Escape Room, now streaming on Prime Video. Directed, written, and produced by Taylor through her company The Aunties, it plays like a noir slow burn — part romance, part eulogy, all soul. In both album and film, Taylor builds a world where healing doesn’t happen in silence, but in harmony.
“Escape Room isn’t just a film or an album,” she shares, “it’s a world I built to live in, bleed in, and heal in.”
This is not performance. This is exhale. This is ritual.
Escape Room isn’t just the story of a woman getting over someone. It’s the story of a woman getting back to herself. The mirrors are cracked, but they still reflect. The rooms are locked, but she finds the keys. And at the end of the hall, something sacred: not just survival, but transformation.
Stream Escape Room now, and watch the film on Prime Video and YouTube. Bring tissues. Bring your own story. Bring your whole heart.
