For close to 20 years, Teyana Taylor has commanded attention. Elder Millennials, like me, recognize the Harlem, New Yorker from her ’80s/'90s-themed birthday extravaganza, featured on My Super Sweet 16, as well as her 2018 reality TV show, Teyana & Iman, and its 2021 sequel We Got Love Teyana & Iman, filmed with ex-husband Iman Shumpert. The youngest Gen Zers first caught sight of her on the premiere of Kanye West’s “Fade” music video after the 2016 MTV VMAs when a chiseled, glistening Taylor danced across the screen for a captivating 3 minutes and 44 seconds. This past summer, Gen Alpha heralded her return to music after retiring to slack-jawed shock back in 2020, with her album Escape Room.
And this fall, the proud multi-hyphenate continues to impress all generations as she firmly enters her acting era, coming off her role as Detective Kay Raymond (a cop with a walk and a bob that took TikTok by storm) in Straw and garnering attention for her turn in Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another.
