Tinashe Artistfacts

February 6, 1993
Her full name is Tinashe Jorgensen Kachingwe. Tinashe is pronounced Tee-NAH-sha like Tina. Tinashe means "God is with us" in Shona, a Bantu language spoken in her father's home country of Zimbabwe.
Tinashe started out as a baby model and child actor; she played a dying character in the TV movie Cora Unashamed when she was 5 years old. Her mother Aimie, a physical therapist, and father Michael, a professor of theater, recognized her talents and did everything they could to support their daughter's creative pursuits.
When Tinashe was seven, her father moved the family from Chicago to Los Angeles to further her acting career. The roles soon clocked up, including a gig as a motion-capture model in the animated film The Polar Express (2004), a regular role in the Cartoon Network TV series Out of Jimmy's Head (2007–2008) and a recurring feature as Jake Harper's girlfriend on the sitcom Two and a Half Men (2008-09). "They really just took a chance on me and moved to LA.," Tinashe revealed. "Because they did that and never told me to this day that it was financially difficult, I give them almost all the credit to my self-confidence to succeed."
At the age of 14, Tinashe landed a spot in a bubblegum girl group The Stunners, put together by pop star Vitamin C. They opened on Justin Bieber's My World Tour before disbanding when she was 18. Watch Justin Bieber's "Baby" video and you'll see a cameo from Tinashe where she sits next to Drake and Lil Twist.

"It was super random," Tinashe told MTV News. "I think they just asked me if I wanted to be in the video as a cameo, and I was just like, 'Sure.' I wasn't doing anything. So I just came and did it and I didn't really know what to expect. Drake was in it. Good times."
It was during her stint in Two and a Half Men that Tinashe decided to make music her primary focus. "When I was on Two and a Half Men, that was a crucial turning point," she recalled to NME, "because I was about 16 years old and that was when I really decided to go for music fully. I felt I needed to focus on one or the other for people to really take me seriously. So I decided that I was going to 100 percent do music and let people know that that was really what I was about."
With her earnings from acting gigs, Tinashe built a home studio and honed her production skills through YouTube tutorials. She released a 2012 mixtape, In Case We Die, that led to her RCA signing.
Tinashe released her debut studio album, Aquarius, in 2014. The album's lead single, "2 On," was a hit, and Tinashe has since released a series of critically acclaimed records.
Both Tinashe and her brother Thulani have black belts in Taekwondo.
Tinashe prefers to work with tracks that initially seem difficult to approach. She told MTCML she enjoys the creative process of turning something unexpected or even detuned into a digestible, catchy song, finding more excitement in the challenge than in making something straightforward.

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