[2] The album features guest appearances from Offset, Ty Dolla Sign, French Montana, Little Dragon, and Future.

[6] The title track, “Joyride” was taken by Rihanna for her album ANTi, but was cut from the final version and according to Tinashe, her label was forced to buy the song back.

On September 9, Tinashe leaked the buzz single "Party Favors" featuring rapper Young Thug as a way to get the ball rolling on her label's part.

On October 2, 2015, Tinashe released another song, "Player" featuring Chris Brown, as the first intended lead single of the album.

A few weeks later, on November 17, Tinashe held a breakfast listening party for Joyride at the Sony Club in New York City, which was attended by reporters and various other members of the music industry.

The song was released on July 15, 2016 and the music video, directed by Hannah Lux Davis, debuted on August 12, 2016 on MTV's Snapchat to rave reviews.

In a March 30, 2018 interview, Tinashe claimed that the release of "Flame" as a lead single was her record label's idea, saying: "I wasn’t forced, but it was one of these situations where it was like 'Okay, I will trust you guys and this is what you believe is the best decision so I'm going to get behind it', because that's more advantageous than to sabotage my own songs... And when that wasn't necessarily successful, I realized that it was my turn to get back into the driver's seat as far as curating every move I made from there on out.

[2] On March 30, 2018, the third single "Me So Bad", featuring Ty Dolla Sign and French Montana, was released along with a Sahsa Samsonova-directed music video.

In late January 2015, Tinashe was reported to be working with writers and producers from Prescription Songs (Cirkut, Ammo, Rock City, Jakob Kasher, Chloe Angelides), Max Martin[17] and Taylor Parks on the album.

[20][21] In an April 5, 2018 article in Vulture, Tinashe stated: "Once I brought in producers and writers, we were in there every day being creative... We set the vibe, had Taco Tuesday parties.

In this Vulture article, Tinashe admitted that "three [different] versions of this album exist" and that there "are probably 200 songs" total that were recorded over the course of a three-year period.

[22] Tinashe explained to Billboard the meaning behind the title: "I always had it in the back of my head, but it started to become more and more relevant to my current state of my career.

"[40] For Exclaim!, Ryan B. Patrick scored the album a 7 out of 10, stating that "Joyride is a stop-start journey that doesn't quite stall out, but does feel like some ground has been lost.

"[30] In a positive review, Zoë Madonna of The Boston Globe stated "the most fascinating offerings on Joyride are that the singer recorded herself in her home studio", and that "in these tracks, she touches something stellar.