Teyana Taylor Unveils Escape Room as Multimedia Album and Film

Teyana Taylor is pressing forward with a multimedia comeback that blends music, film and personal storytelling. Her fourth album, Escape Room, is due for release this Friday, August 22, accompanied by an accompanying short film she wrote, directed, produced and stars in. The project, created with her all-female production company The Aunties, unfolds as a postapocalyptic, futuristic noir romance that Taylor says is more than a conventional album or movie: it is a world she built to live in, bleed in and heal in. The release will be celebrated with a livestreamed premiere from Culver Theater and Amazon Music’s Culver City headquarters, with a post-screening Q&A moderated by Lena Waithe, and the program will be streamed on the Amazon Music app and Twitch. After the night’s events, the film will be available on Prime Video.

Escape Room is built around a 22-track body of work that features a host of collaborators and a distinctive use of narration. Taylor has enlisted the vocal and spoken interludes of prominent women across film and culture, including Taraji P. Henson, Sarah Paulson, La La Anthony, Niecy Nash, and Kerry Washington, among others, to lend voices that frame the...