Teedra Moses

The magnetic Teedra Moses doesn’t shy away from expressing her emotional vulnerability, describing a crush from afar on “Be Your Girl,” while alternatively tackling the other side of the game on her mid-tempo lamentation “You'll Never Find (A Better Woman)”—where she’s in love with a man more concerned with finance than romance. “I wrote it in a way for women in the projects to get it, as far as it comes off like this guy might be a drug dealer,” says Teedra. “I wrote it that way purposely just to catch that audience, ’cause that’s what that song was supposed to be, a really street song. It’s dealing with an experience I had with a man who was really concerned with getting his money right. I didn’t need the money, I didn’t need any of those things. I just needed [him].” Appropriately enough, Teedra Moses and her partner-in-crime producer Pauli Pol met at the tail end of a bittersweet romance like those sprinkled throughout Complex Simplicity. Best known for his production on Black Eyed Peas debut single “Joints & Jam,” Pauli Pol was referred to Teedra Moses by a mutual friend as she prepared to put behind her days as an assistant stylist to the stars in pursuit of her singing dream. “[Pauli] did the entire album with me because I wanted it to be something really personal and a union, like a marriage, not all over the place,” says Teedra. The finished product—executive produced by both Pauli Pol and Teedra Moses herself—is exactly the seamless combination she intended; though made up of a variety of different feelings and moods, their unity of vision shines through.

With an album inspired overwhelmingly by her own direct personal experiences, Teedra Moses harbors no regrets over her ride to success. Since her beginnings, born and raised in New Orleans, her life has been grist for the creative mill that produced Complex Simplicity: a labor of love and the realization of a lifelong dream. “Some things you feel you have to stick with, [but] it doesn’t give you any fulfillment,” says Teedra. “With singing, creating music gives me a fulfillment that I knew I wouldn’t find in anything else. So I just decided to stop short in styling and start pursuing music.”