First Listen: Tii 'Played' ft Madison Cubbage

Discovering the rising LA-based and Haiwan-born R&B songstress Tii through her latest single ‘Played’, a deeply feeling cut that focuses heavily on the heartache she felt when her relationship comes to an end ultimtely finding empowerment in her own self as she looks back on the past encounter with clarity.

Growing up in the city of Honolulu where she lived up until the age of 18 before, she moved to New York to pursue further education in music school. She then moved to Los Angeles to start her professional career.

Surrounded by a variety of music when living on the island Tii would enjoy listening to traditional Hawaiian songs. “I actually sang Hawaiian a lot growing up, I also listened to a lot of reggae, my dad loves reggae, Tii shares. “ I also was exposed a lot to Japanese music. There’s a big Asian culture in Hawaii and my grandparents really wanted me to sing and compete in Japanese.” Tii competed from the age of ten in Japanese and Hawaiian.

Everything that she does is led by feeling, which allows ‘Play’ to be emotive and stirring. Tii croons in a low honeyed tone sitting slightly above a softly strummed looped acoustic guitar rift.

Artist Perception

Why did you feel the need to write this song?

“This song is one of the songs I wrote a while ago. It’s actually one of the first songs I wrote. I was kind of in a bad relationship, and I’ve never written a song before, but I was so fed up with everything.Music has always been my outlet, so during covid I sat down found some chords and wrote this song."

"It comes from a really deep place, and when I was filming the music video, I sang the whole thing probably fifty times to make my emotions real and every time I would tear up at a certain point because it takes me back to where I was before and I feel that hurt all over again. Which is quite moving and painful sometimes.”

“It was hard emotionally, getting there is scary sometimes”, she admits. “ Thinking about the things and how they made me feel because usually on the day to-day, I’m a very happy person and I don’t normally let things affect me.”

Visuals

“From the very beginning, I was like red! Dancing with red was the only thing I really pushed for during the music video.”The colour perfectly reflected the mood and atmosphere that Tii created, and the expressive choreography emphasised that during the video.

Explaining the ambiguous nature of red “Red could mean so many different things and that’s the colour I see when I see this song.”, the songstress shares.

Continuing, Tii says “I feel that it’s love, a feeling of deep love and also at the same time the pain that comes from that. Sometimes it’s painful to love someone or to see someone get hurt. So red for me is everything.”

After speaking to her close friend Madison who is a professional dancer, they spoke about Tii potentially dancing in the video before deciding to shot Madison do it instead.

Speaking about the decision behind that, Tii says “ I told her to listen to the song lyrics and then dance how it makes you feel. We took about five takes and she killed it, it was basically all improve.”

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