Actress and singer Teyana Taylor recently appeared on New England Patriots star quarterback Cam Newton’s new weekly talk show on BET.com, “Sip N’ Smoke,” where she discussed her recent announcement about retiring from music. In December 2020, the singer took to Instagram Live to explain that she wanted to be released from her labels Def Jam and Good Music because she didn’t feel she was a priority and it was starting to become mentally overwhelming.
Taylor told Newton that her number one priority was being a mom and she didn’t want her label ordeals spilling out to how she treats her family. The wife of NBA star and newly signed Brooklyn Nets shooting guard Iman Shumpert and mother of their two kids, explained that you have to be heard in any relationship or there’s no need to continue.
“At the end of the day, I’m a mom first. A mom, a wife, a woman. And I think for me, I put in a lot of work. I work very, very hard. So, if you feel unheard and unseen—like how I said earlier with my husband. He sees me, he hears me. I take that s—serious,” expressed Taylor in the interview. “Everything that I do. So if you’re my husband, or I’m signed, everybody that I’m aligned with should see me. They should hear me. They should feel me. If you don’t see me, hear me, or feel me, it’s a dub for you.”
Taylor’s label woes hit the fan in 2018 when K.T.S.E. (Keep That Same Energy) dropped to rave reviews without hardly any label support or push during the rollout. She had issues with Kanye’s marketing plan for a Good Music artist rollout to release several projects from the label around the same time, which caused her album to get lost in the shuffle.
“And I felt like the label wasn’t really hearing me and seeing me. I felt underappreciated. So, for my mental health, my mental well-being, for my kids, let me just put this on ice for a little. It’s not that I retired permanently. It’s more like, I just don’t feel like I want to move another inch for a company,” she further revealed to Cam.
Check out Teyana Taylor’s honest discussion with Cam Newton on “Sip N’ Smoke” on the following page.
