Album Review: Therapy Wasn’t Enough by Inayah
Inayah’s fourth album turns a public breakup into a grievance she can’t stop airing, and the writing goes slack the minute she decides to forgive him.
Inayah, the Houston singer who built a fanbase remaking other people’s hits over and over again online before her hit single “Fairy Tale,” knows that culture and in every single track, she is outraged that all her business is public for everyone to see. When these songs roll in, the split is already a public commodity. It took place in October. The ex took it to Instagram and put all the dirty laundry out for everybody to air out, and then people started to take sides, and from there on out, every move was photographed. She’s at her best when she bares her teeth.
On “Downside,” she winds the clock back to October. They broke up, he “hopped on the ‘Gram, acting out,” and she was on there telling him to “keep my name out yo’ mouth.” Then by November, he had caught a plane out to her, and she spent her birthday feeling nothing alone. And by December, he’s “posting pictures in the ocean with your hair down,” suddenly repentant, and she’s left torn between wanting him back and feeling the urge to wring his neck out. DJ Chose’s mid-tempo piano-trap soul beat makes for some smooth running; she makes the worst moments come out to the irritation. “Deleting pictures, now my fans really on to me/Leaving me to explain why yo’ ass out the country.” “WTF” condenses it into one rule of business: the fight should have stayed home. “If we’re gonna fight it/Should be in private/I’m trying not to lose my composure/In front of people that don’t even know us.” Over a slow snap beat with synth bass and strings, she lists every move he made outside in the public, trashing and flailing around acting the fool in front of everybody who couldn’t tell one from the next and then summarizes the disaster.
“Fucking up the fairy tale
Putting us through hell
This ain’t no lullaby.”
Her begging starts to turn into a threat with “Too Much to Lie.” She mostly spent the song hyping herself up and stating “you will never find another one like me in your life,” but also every few bars, the voice begins to get harsher; “You gon’ lose me/Leave you with your pride if you don’t choose me.” She had loved him before his fame “rearranged” him to where he “didn’t know a thing” and accept her like she was, and the insinuation that her feelings were just for show was enough to provoke a quick response to him: “Take that back.” The Underdogs makes the piano beat warm enough to let this warning slide by quickly. Then she says it all again on “All for Nothing,” which includes a bouncy, Timbaland-style beat from Agape & Seige Monstracity and Rance 1500. The hook consists of pleading “can’t be all for nothing,” while the outro gives up on pleading: “You better handle me carefully/Don’t handle me carelessly... My love or my enemy/Which one would you rather be?”
“Choose” is the highlight; the problem is laid out cleanly: “Why do I have to choose between the sweetest love I’ve ever gotten from a man/And music? That’s so unfair.” Mustapha and Triangle Park serve up a slow, turn-of-the-millennium-flavored beat for her contemplation, and she turns the ultimatum back on him; that a man who loved her wouldn’t put her in this situation: “If you love me like you say you do/Then you would never make me choose.” Then the singing stops. The song is topped by half-spoken, half-sung sections where she works through the pain of this separation until she lands on God: she “needed to hear from God” and he was “doing a new thing in the man that’s going to be my husband.” This is as naked as she ever gets anywhere.
She feels liberated as soon as she stops pleading and starts dictating terms. “Outside” is the relinquish; Lil’ Mo and Fabolous’ “4Ever” sampled, over an interpolation of Usher’s “U Don’t Have to Call” which serves as a kiss-off worthy of turn of the millennium scorn, delivered with cutting intent: “So you don’t have to call... I wouldn’t pick it up anyway... You made your bed, now that’s where you lay.” She’s tired of home trying to salvage what she can, she’s out “doing what every boss bitch does,” and DeezyBaby and the crew provide a beat bouncy enough to silence her anger. “Need You” directs that same nerve toward a desire to hold on; the hook, “I need you,” is direct, but she frames the reconciliation as a signed contract: “This ain’t no motherfuckin’ friendship... This type of shit take commitment from both us/Is you riding or what?”
The song which opens up the possibility of doubt is only “All Falls Down;” she gives up on her practiced certainty long enough over Andrew Clifton and Eric Hudson’s ballad to confess, “Half of me’s already gone/And half just stays.”
Out of the fray, the writing gets uncomplicated. “You and Me” retains a touch of their spark. Inayah refuses to even glance at the man in the other corner of the room, but still insists she’s “still about” him, the same one who “makes me laugh when I’m mad” and delights in irritating her. The Underdogs lay her voice over slow piano and heavy harmonies, and in its sheer exasperation, she’s at her liveliest. “Let Me Down” is pure earnest stiffness, vows constructed from the generic building blocks of greeting cards: “I could always build you up/Won’t tear you down/Long as you’re sticking around.” Brandon Hodge’s late-80s homage is pretty; the “this ain’t no reality show” rejoinder pops up again, and for a moment, the cameras feel like they’re back in the room.
Forgiveness is a choice for “Crazy Too.” She gives up pinning all of it on him, allows herself to say, “Walking out is easy/Forgiving you is hard” and owns the fact that she’s just as unsteady as he is: “I understand you/Only ‘cause I’m crazy too.” Darhyl Camper’s vintage piano provides the softest cushion to this point, and here Inayah sits, staying next to him “even when you’re dead wrong.” This is where she’s most calm in the record, and the peace she earns loses the acidity that made the earlier songs pop. Downside” details the man’s beach photos while she covered his disappearance, lives and breathes more than this. Inayah, who argues herself right back into his room.
Great (★★★★☆)
Favorite Track(s): “Downside,” “Choose,” “Outside”
I love vulnerable albums like this. It really gave me a sense of her relationship status and how she was chronicling through the journey of repairing and reconciliation. Her writing and singing were both top tier for her on this album.