The Chicago MC wants to save you from yourself

Tink’s last long-playing project, 2022’s Pillow Talk, was a wealth of odes to the kind of fun the lovers have when the lights go low. Pillow Talk’s follow-up, Thanks 4 Nothing, has a few allusions to that zone (“Let My Guard Down,” “Stingy,” “Ain’t Gotta Leave”), but is much more about taking a good, hard look at yourself in the light of day, assessing what all that fun might truly mean, both to yourself and the person you’ve shared it with. “Thank you for the disappointment, thank you for the betrayal, the lies, the deceit,” she offers to a nameless lover on “Thanks 4 Nothing (Intro).” “Thank you for showing me I could survive, I could thrive without you.”

Thanks 4 Nothing is hardly just candied resentment, though. Tink sings from a place of experience, taking responsibility for her own misguided rules of engagement on “Toxic,” letting ex-flames know just how good they could have had it on “I’m the Catch,” and detailing what it’s like to yearn for someone denying you the energy you deserve on “Someone on You.” She opines on the state of relationships in general on “Fake Love” and “Save Your Soul.” The production on Thanks 4 Nothing comes courtesy of longtime collaborator Hitmaka, and Tink mostly eschews guests, save for Ty Dolla $ign and Yung Bleu. It’s almost as if she’s being especially choosy with collaborators in all walks of her life. The guiding ethos there is one she spells out on “Trust Issues” when she asks, “What could you do for a bitch that don’t need nothing from you?”