Blessing Jolie’s tempestuous, cathartic coming-of-age anthem “20teens” turns self-awareness into resolve, transforming the moment you stop negotiating with your own discomfort and finally choose yourself into something loud, cinematic, and undeniably empowering – a defining statement from an Artist to Watch off her upcoming debut album ‘20nothing.’

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Stream: “20teens” – Blessing Jolie

Someone showed me who they truly were and then tried to retract it, but I wasn’t having it.

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There comes a point where clarity stops being gentle.

Where you recognize the pattern, name the red flag, and realize that continuing would cost you more than walking away ever could. Growing up often announces itself in moments like these – not as certainty, but as self-trust; the quiet, resolute decision to stop negotiating with your own discomfort. That reckoning – sharp, unflinching, and hard-won – fuels Blessing Jolie’s “20teens,” a tempestuous, larger-than-life release that turns self-awareness into combustion and self-respect into something loud enough to shake the walls.

Twenty nothing now
same friends, same threads
Tug my heart at the same ol’ seams
Dot your I’s all on my T’s
Gotta break the news, I’m in my head
You never come break no bread
Let me loose to keep your cred, I say

Surely there has gotta be
a list where my name is
Surely whited out,
more like blacked out
Time came to tell me not
Karma said he wanna come
around with no daisies
Turn the light out, whеn I find out
It was twice now
You went to nookie

Released September 12, 2025 via ThirtyTigers, “20teens” is the unapologetic and soul-stirring second single taken off Blessing Jolie’s upcoming debut album 20nothing (out this March). A bold, high-voltage introduction to Jolie’s world, it doesn’t just spotlight potential – it stamps her as an undeniable Artist to Watch this year, a rising storyteller with the voice, presence, and pen to meet the moment head-on.

Raised in Katy, Texas, the 23-year-old Nigerian American artist has been writing songs since she was fifteen – learning guitar the hard way, failing loudly, and returning anyway, persistence shaping her artistry as much as talent. Her influences are as eclectic as her emotional range – from Shawn Mendes and Destiny’s Child to Limp Bizkit – and you can hear that wide-open appetite in the way she blurs borders between folk intimacy, R&B soul, and pop-punk punch without ever losing the thread of sincerity.

As unapologetic in her lyrics as she is uncompromising in her artistry, Jolie’s vulnerability is her compass.

She has described her music as a documentation of her life, “the emotions I rarely say out loud,” and “20teens” arrives with that same unfiltered, raw honesty – only now it’s framed as catharsis with teeth, a coming-of-age refusal to stay stuck in anyone else’s pattern.

“‘20teens’ is one of my favorite songs from my upcoming album, and I’m beyond excited to finally release it,” she tells Atwood Magazine. “I wrote it in a moment of clarity – when I started recognizing red flags and realized I don’t have to accept what I can’t tolerate. It’s another honest moment, one the song captures candidly.”

That “moment of clarity” is the song’s engine: the point where the heart stops bargaining and starts drawing boundaries. “20teens” opens in a place of restraint – tender, open-handed guitar lines setting the scene like a held breath – while Jolie steps in sounding measured but alert, her voice carrying the weight of someone already halfway to the truth. In the first verse, she sketches a life caught in repetition – “Twenty nothing now same friends, same threads / Tug my heart at the same ol’ seams” – capturing the quiet exhaustion of realizing how long you’ve been circling the same emotional ground, mistaking familiarity for stability.

There’s a sharp, almost conversational wit threaded through these early lines – “My present looking lot like my past / Only difference I got HBO Max” – humor cutting through the ache without dulling it. Jolie isn’t romanticizing the cycle; she’s naming it, clocking the way routine can masquerade as comfort even as it keeps you small. Her delivery remains controlled, but the tension is unmistakable – each line tightening the screws as the arrangement slowly swells beneath her.

By the time she reaches the pre-chorus, that restraint begins to crack. The questions turn inward, then accusatory – “Surely there has gotta be a list where my name is / Surely whited out, more like blacked out” – a brutal image of erasure that lands with quiet devastation. Even in her most dramatic swells, Jolie sounds centered in her conviction, threading wit and bite through the bruises. What follows is the sound of realization hitting twice as hard: “Turn the light out, when I find out / It was twice now” – clarity arriving not as a whisper, but as a shock, and then an undeniable confirmation. It’s a sharp, spiraling inner monologue that snaps into focus the second the chorus hits, no take-backs and no softening the truth.

Darling how you lеave me like that
Stupid now you want be my man
Pawn her, call her, holding out a bit longer
No take backs, bitch take that
I won’t have 20teens in my-

When the chorus finally detonates, Jolie lets everything loose. Drums crash, guitars flare, and her voice surges with fury, disbelief, and resolve all at once – “Darling, how you leave me like that / Stupid, now you want be my man” – the words tumbling out like truths she’s done protecting. You can hear her push past the melody, leaning into the line rather than smoothing it out, as if volume itself becomes a form of boundary. The line “I won’t have 20teens in my bed” lands as both boundary and declaration: a refusal to keep reliving the same heartbreak under the guise of nostalgia, a promise to herself not to carry old patterns forward just because they’re familiar.

This is not a song for the middle of the spiral. It’s a song for the moment after – when the decision has already been made, when going back is no longer an option, and when strength shows up not as anger, but as resolve.

“20teens” doesn’t try to talk you out of staying; it meets you exactly when you’ve decided you’re done.

It’s a release that feels earned, not impulsive – the sound of someone finally saying what they mean and meaning it fully. In that explosive turn, “20teens” transforms from introspection into declaration, from recognition into action – a fiery, unflinching refusal to shrink, settle, or stay silent in the face of her own knowing.

For Jolie, that eruption isn’t just dramatic – it’s deliberate and intentional. “20teens” marks a shift not only in how she writes, but in how she speaks. “I want people to know that I say what I mean,” she explains. “I don’t always mean some of the abrasive things I say, but I do always say what’s on my mind.” That clarity of voice – unfiltered, unsmoothed, and unapologetic – is what gives the song its bite. It’s not about revenge or rehashing the hurt; it’s about the instant when you finally believe yourself enough to draw the line. The power here isn’t in sounding wounded, but in sounding sure.

In that way, “20teens” captures a distinctly early-twenties realization: The moment when endurance stops being romantic and discernment takes its place. It’s a coming-of-age not defined by heartbreak itself, but by the decision to stop mistaking tolerance for maturity.

That confidence sharpens as the song pushes forward, especially in its later verses, where Jolie revisits the relationship with even clearer eyes.

“Only fall for you to fall back in bed / Shit, I’d rather watch Charmed instead” lands with cutting specificity – intimacy reduced to habit, attachment exposed as routine, longing replaced by distraction. When she deadpans, “My present looking lot like my past / Only difference I got HBO Max,” the humor isn’t deflective; it’s diagnostic. She’s clocking the cycle for what it is, naming the stagnation without romanticizing it. Growth hasn’t arrived yet, but awareness has – and that awareness is what makes staying impossible.

Only fall for you to fall back in bed
Shit, I’d rather watch Charmed instead
My present looking lot like my past
Only difference I got HBO Max
You’re something now and it’s fine by me
I’mma go out, club with a bad bitch beat
Now you’re telling me I’m all lip, no feet
Cause, I’m still at home and I still can’t beat

There’s a pointed restraint to how Jolie delivers these lines – a composure that mirrors what she describes as the song’s defining quality. “What makes ‘20teens’ special is that I was able to express my hurt without actually sounding hurt,” she says, “which is why the song carries that sarcastic, witty edge.” That distance is crucial: The pain is there, but it no longer runs the show. Instead, it’s been processed, sharpened, and turned outward as resolve.

That list where my name is (is)
Surely whited out, more like blacked out
Time came to tell me not
Karma said he wanna
come around with no daisies
Turn the light out, when I find out
It was twice now that
You went to nookie

That resolve crystallizes in the chorus’s most definitive declaration. “I won’t have 20teens in my bed” isn’t just a boundary – it’s a worldview. As Jolie puts it plainly, “In ‘20teens,’ I made it known that I don’t offer second chances.” The line lands not as bitterness, but as self-respect finally spoken aloud, a refusal to let nostalgia, attraction, or history override what’s already been revealed.

Darling, how you leave me like that
Stupid now you want be my man
Pawn her, call her, holding out a bit longer
No take backs, bitch take that
I won’t have 20teens in my bed

Even as Jolie imagines motion – “I’ma go out, club with a bad bitch beat” – the song keeps circling back to the same internal reckoning, the same erasure she can no longer ignore. Escape is tempting, but clarity won’t be rushed. “Surely there has gotta be a list where my name is / Surely whited out, more like blacked out” resurfaces like an intrusive thought, reinforcing the truth she’s already named: this isn’t a misunderstanding, it’s a pattern. By the time she repeats “Turn the light out, when I find out / It was twice now,” the shock has hardened into certainty – the kind that doesn’t ask permission or wait to be softened.

Pawn her, call her,
holding out a bit longer
No take backs, bitch take that
I won’t have 20teens in my bed

The outro seals that transformation. Repetition becomes ritual; realization becomes release. “It was twice now I was lucky” reframes the betrayal not as loss, but as escape – luck defined not by what she endured, but by what she’s no longer willing to carry. Heard this way, the repetition isn’t redundancy but reinforcement, the mind replaying the truth until it finally sticks. “20teens” doesn’t just end a chapter; it closes the door on it, leaving no room for revisionism, nostalgia, or return.

Turn the light out when I find out
It was twice now you went to nookie
Turn the light out when I find out
It was twice now you went to nookie
Turn the light out when I find out
It was twice now I was lucky

That sentiment mirrors the lesson Jolie hopes listeners take with them: “When someone shows you who they really are, believe them.”

It’s a hard-earned realization, delivered without regret – the sound of someone who’s learned the difference between staying hopeful and staying stuck.

That sense of growth runs parallel to the larger arc of her debut album 20nothing, which Jolie describes as grappling with “early-twenties growing pains – ‘20teens’ being one of them.” In that context, the song becomes more than a breakup anthem; it’s a marker of adulthood, a line drawn between who she was and who she’s choosing to be now. As she reflects, “I’ve grown up – I’m 24, not 19 – and ‘20teens’ is a symbol of that growth.”

That same philosophy extends into the song’s visual world. With the release of its new Cass Meyers (SZA) directed music video (a first for the artist), Jolie expands the story beyond sound, translating memory into motion. “Putting visuals to this song means everything – it makes the song feel worthy of being seen,” she explains. “I was born in the early 2000s, and my connection to that era now feels like memory filtered through time rather than something to recreate. That memory, over the era itself, was the real influence. The video leans into the feeling of a throwback while letting me tell my present-day story through that lens. Every scene translates what I went through – dialogue, clearing my head, strength, chaos – into visual form without losing meaning. It tells the whole story, and I’m truly appreciative of that.”

And that’s exactly what “20teens” does in sound, too: it treats memory like a lens, not a destination – revisiting the past only long enough to name what it cost, then stepping forward with a voice big enough to hold both the ache and the aftermath.

“20teens” doesn’t ask for sympathy – it asks for recognition. It’s the sound of someone choosing clarity over comfort, discernment over endurance, and truth over nostalgia. That same conviction runs through Blessing Jolie’s words off the page, too. Speaking candidly with Atwood Magazine, she reflects on saying what she means, drawing hard lines, and how this song – and 20nothing as a whole – captures the growing pains of learning when to walk away.

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Stream: “20teens” – Blessing Jolie

A CONVERSATION WITH BLESSING JOLIE

Blessing Jolie: I want people to know that I say what I mean. I don’t always mean some of the abrasive things I say, but I do always say what’s on my mind.

Blessing Jolie: Some of my musical north stars are Shawn Mendes, Eminem, and Destiny’s Child. What I love about my own music is that, at least to me, it takes all 3 and creates an entirely new artist a little different from but also a little similar to them.

Blessing Jolie: Someone showed me who they truly were and then tried to retract it, but I wasn’t having it.

Blessing Jolie: What makes “20teens” special is that I was able to express my hurt without actually sounding hurt, which is why the song carries that sarcastic, witty edge.

Blessing Jolie: In “20teens,” I made it known that I don’t offer second chances.

Blessing Jolie: The album deals with early-twenties growing pains – “20teens” being one of them.

Blessing Jolie: I want listeners to take from 20teens what I did: when someone shows you who they really are, believe them.

Blessing Jolie: I’d point listeners toward “19 and peaked,” which tells the story of a girl who keeps sticking around, mishap after mishap. “20teens,” on the other hand, delivers a clear message: if you mess up, we’re done. I’ve grown up – I’m 24, not 19 – and “20teens” is a symbol of that growth.

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:: stream/purchase 20teens here ::

:: connect with Blessing Jolie here ::

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Stream: “20teens” – Blessing Jolie

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