“It’s Really Fucking Turnt”: Five Minutes With Teyana Taylor at Her Secret Burlesque Show

SUNDAY 2:13 AM MAY 5, 2024 TIMES SQUARE

A couple days before the Met Gala, Teyana Taylor hosted a secret midtown soirée at the Edition’s Paradise Club to get her star-studded audience in the mood for fashion’s hottest night. Leo DiCaprio, Ayo Edebiri, and Alex Consani watched as the R&B siren and her dancers stripped and popped it under the red lights to brassy jazz remixes of Sexyy Red, with surprise performances by Summer Walker and LaLa Anthony. Phones were banned at the cabaret due to the nature of the show… but Taylor let loose to MC the afterparty, so we grabbed her in the middle of the dancefloor for a quick ki.

———

TEYANA TAYLOR: Hi!

MEKALA RAJAGOPAL: How are you feeling?

TAYLOR: I’m feeling great. It feels good to really see my vision come to life. How are you feeling?

RAJAGOPAL: I’m feeling sexy, sultry, a little turned on. All of the above.

TAYLOR: I mean, you’re literally feeling all of the things that I want you to feel.

RAJAGOPAL: I love that.

TAYLOR: I love that for us.

RAJAGOPAL: Okay, where are we at?

TAYLOR: We are at the fucking Dirty Rose, at the Last Rose Motel.

RAJAGOPAL: There are some roses missing from your outfit.

TAYLOR: [Laughs] That was good. Just so you know, we put this together in two weeks.

RAJAGOPAL: I heard.

TAYLOR: The actual idea has been on paper for years. I’ve been shopping it for years, but I’ve gotten so busy doing movies and being a mom and everything else in life. So when the opportunity finally came, it was one of those things where I was already ready so I didn’t have to get ready. It was like, okay, we’re gonna pull this off, and I’m so proud of how it came out. How you feel is exactly how I want you to feel. You know? Ayeeee. I’m sorry.

RAJAGOPAL: What are you drinking?

TAYLOR: Hennessy margarita, but it’s a custom Hennessy margarita. It’s the Dirty Rose. 

RAJAGOPAL: Your dancers killed it, and the costumes were fab.

TAYLOR: Thank you so much. I styled the whole show myself.

RAJAGOPAL: Oh, wow.

TAYLOR: Don’t get me wrong, I have a team of people who are sewing, putting on patches and diamonds, and putting it together. But for me to be the artist and stylist and one of the lead choreographers—I’m a very hands-on person and I appreciate everyone that got to be part of it.

RAJAGOPAL: You smell great. What are you wearing?

TAYLOR: Thank you. So I’m wearing a little concoction of things. I would tell you but I have like ten different perfumes so I wear like four a day. Maybe four things today and four different ones tomorrow. But I get that a lot and I love it because I can never smell it myself and they say when you can’t smell it yourself but everybody else do, that’s when you’re doing something right.

RAJAGOPAL: Right. That’s when it blends into your skin chemistry.

TAYLOR: Yes.

RAJAGOPAL: What stretches do you do before dancing?

TAYLOR: No stretches, I ate pizza and prayed.

RAJAGOPAL: [Laughs] Did you make eye contact with anyone cute?

TAYLOR: I’m blind—fashionably blind. I didn’t see a soul in here but I felt everybody’s soul in here. You know?

RAJAGOPAL: What are you doing after?

TAYLOR: You know what’s crazy, I’m sure you understand this, but this is the first time that a show-turned-after party actually succeeded.

RAJAGOPAL: I know, right?

TAYLOR: I didn’t think it would actually succeed. I thought they’d see the show and all leave, but everybody stayed. It’s actually really fucking turnt. Wooo!