Yaya Bey tells stories with the tender embrace and the hardened resolve of a wounded soothsayer. Since her first release, ‘The Many Alter-Egos of Trill’eta Brown‘, Yaya Bey has artfully projected a personal faith grounded in the communal welfare of black women. On her debut album, those conceptual soundbites crystallize as Bey guides the listener through her quest for healing, guided by the light of her ‘North Star’.
Part memoir, part treatise, Yaya Bey segues through Black musical traditions; syrupy neo-soul, the dazed distortion of self-conscious rap, sonorous ska and afro-infused anthems playing out a long, ambling journey of a survivor rebuilding her life anew. In a deeply personal exchange, Bey expounds upon the vignettes woven into the fabric of her full-length; the thorny romantic entanglements, the sustaining nature of platonic love and sisterhood, the virulent legacy of misogynoir and the spectre of her distant parentage which looms large over this latest masterwork.
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Let’s start with your experience with Big Dada, this incubator run by Black and minority ethnic people for Black and minority ethnic artists. Your 2021 EP, ‘The Things I Can’t Take With Me’, was the first release to coincide with the label’s relaunch. How would you frame this partnership?
The partnership is grounded in support. Big Dada don’t bombard me too much. They give me advice; they give me resources and they let me do what I feel I need to do with it. It’s just about support and making sure I have what I need to make the work I’m trying to make. With Ninja Tune and Big Dada, they’d reached out in 2019 when I released ‘This too…’ but the timing didn’t align. I’m blessed they came back around.
You’re an artist, activist, curator, the list goes on. What is the thematic thread that binds your work together?
Survival. I’m trying to survive; I’m trying to process my emotions and trauma so that I can make space to have joy and to live a full life. I’m trying to provide for my community. Art is a means to survival.
Your past projects wove in out of memoir and political rhetoric. You’ve always explored the depth, complexity and fullness of what it means to be a black woman today. In retrospect, how do you measure your past works with the artist you are today?
‘The Many Alter-Egos of Trill’eta Brown’ was the first project I put out and honestly, I do feel pretty removed from that now. There’s another project before ‘Madison Tapes’ called ‘This Too…’, which I feel removed from as well because producing and releasing it was challenging; I was making it while I was in the process of getting my divorce. It was way too traumatic to be invested in. Then came ‘Madison Tapes’ and one of the problems I have is that almost as soon as I write a song I’m over it.
You’re conjuring up the next project…
Yes, and I don’t know why that is. I don’t have a fancy answer for it. Maybe my attention span is short. It could be just as simple as that. I write the song and then I’m pretty much over it. My manager always says the song has got to have a life now and you’ve got to perform it. I guess there’s always a momentum with me.
How has your process changed since those earlier projects, since realising your autonomy as a creator? In what ways have your experiences developed you as an artist?
I’m more flexible now; I’m more open to new approaches and new sounds. I think I’m more confident as an artist. I wasn’t really open before. It’s changed throughout the years because for much of the last decade, I was with my ex-husband and my sound was his sound because he was doing the production. I didn’t sound like myself until ‘Madison Tapes’ where I was able to find where I fit in and explore other terrains a bit more. It comes down to not being as confident as I was making ‘Remember Your North Star’. I was still limited by what I thought I could do, what I believed I could do. As time goes on, I’m more willing to take a chance with my sound because of the confidence I’m gaining.
That coolness and composure courses through this new album. It’s an album that solidifies your early promise and feels like a redemptive arc after years of hardship…
I’m really grateful for the response. I’m still kind of taking it in. It’s such a blessing that I’ve been able to land on my feet. When I got divorced, I had to separate from my previous management and I moved back home to New York. I remember asking myself how I’d make music because I hadn’t even started producing yet; I’m primarily a songwriter, that’s my strong suit. It all just came together. ‘Madison Tapes’ was supposed to be a five song EP but ended being a full project because I found management, it gave me the confidence to go ahead and define the project. Everything I needed sort of fell into my lap.
Your music pulls from so many Black traditions, it’s a treasure trove of influences. Who are you go-to references?
I’m always listening to Donny Hathaway, Mary J Blige and Frankie Beverly. I just love Frankie Beverly and Maze, specifically because they make cookout music. In the UK you probably have a different word for it but during cookouts we have a certain kind of music that soundtracks it; RnB, soul and a slight disco-adjacent element. Frankie Beverly & Maze are the Gods of this. They find a way to address heavy things happening in the community but it’s addressed in a way that’s uplifting and danceable. There’s a legacy of making beautiful uplifting things out of pain and that was what motivated me throughout the album-making process; how I took this inner turmoil and elevated it. I’m not always going to be sad, I’m just sad in the moment.
Speaking of feel-good songs, ‘pour up’ is one of the more upbeat tracks on the album, tapping into Amapiano takeover – in some ways anomalous from the rest of the record in terms of tempo and movement…
It’s fun! My family is from Barbados and South Carolina, so I have an African-American and Caribbean cultural background. New York is a very Caribbean place. You can’t talk about afrobeats without talking about dancehall. Throughout the African diaspora they’re in a conversation with each other; dancehall is influencing afrobeats and vice versa. Amapiano which is inspired by jazz and house, and so it’s just adding to the conversation on something that culturally I am a part of.
The album’s title, ‘Remember Your North Star’, connotes a kind of mission statement. What is this album’s mission statement? Did you have another title in mind before settling on this?
It was supposed to be called ‘Safe Travels’. I was moving through all these titles about journeys and that’s why the last EP was called ‘The Things I Can’t Take With Me’. I was on a theme of coming home to myself; I had just been through a lot, the life that I knew was disappearing. I was trying to make my way back to me and not be hardened by the experience and I think that’s the “north star” I’m remembering. I’m saying come home to yourself, don’t let this world harden you, remember that love is still the centre of it all – even after traumatic experiences.
You have a real knack for world building. The listener gets a real sense of your environment in these songs; it’s heady and enveloping, steeped in the lore of Brooklyn where you’ve lived much of your life there. How has your neighbourhood, your community, your sense of location informed the storytelling on this album?
New York as a place is really rich in the diversity of black culture. You have people who came here from the American South to escape Jim Crow. There’s rich southern history here, there’s rich Caribbean and African history. Then there is black New York culture which is its own thing, where hip hop and street fashion converge. Culturally and creatively it’s the foundation of everything I know. It’s also really a rough place to live, especially in the winter because the cold is brutal. It’s a capitalist country and it’s the capitalist capital of the most capitalist country in the world. We’re going through a housing crisis right now; landlords are literally raising the rent 100%!
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There are parallels to the UK to be honest. We’re in a cost of living crisis and everything is being funnelled into the hands of the rich…
It’s hard out here. It’s been a wild time in my life because I lost a whole life. I had friends, I lived in a house in DC and everything got uprooted when I came to New York in April of 2019. I was unemployed, I was houseless and was just moving about. I started dating someone which was even more traumatic than my divorce. I had to ask myself: how am I going to get out of this? What trauma am I bringing into this whole situation that I need to let go of? I had to rebuild and the rebuilding process has been really beautiful because it’s shown me what I’m made of.
It’s been exhausting too though. I’m tired and I need a vacation because I’ve been using music as a vehicle to rebuild myself. This is the third project I’ve done in the pandemic. I was making the album during that time and I imagine I’m going to be in a process of releasing music like that for a little while. I’m getting acclimated to this new life but it’s the music that’s rebuilding my life so I’m going with it.
‘North Star’ is a sprawling record replete with segues and skits between tracks which adds colour and heft to the listening experience. Why was was it so important to add autobiographical detail in these interludes?
I was continuing this thing that I had going on with ‘Madison Tapes’. Making that changed my approach to albums. I was documenting everything because I was really depressed during that time, maybe the most depressed I’d ever been. I was working 13-hour days, coming home to record the album and then going to sleep for like two hours and then repeating the cycle. It was not sustainable and it wasn’t healthy the way I went about recording that project but, in the process, I was archiving everything.
I’m obsessed with recording the audio from my environment. In order to really understand this album, I need you to come into my world. I need the listener to listen to the songs but I need to paint the picture of what this era or chapter in my life looked and sounded like. It’s me documenting stages because I’m a different person on each project. That’s not unique to me, every human being is a different person at a different point in their life. That’s the human experience. We’re all just evolving.
Am I right in assuming you wanted a contrast between the heavy, hard-hitting storytelling and the warm, omnipresent production? This juxtaposition of light and dark?
Absolutely. That’s just life, you know? It’s all happening at the same time. The summer I made this project, I was with a guy. I was finishing the album, we had good times but it was about to come to a hard crash…
Is this guy the heart of the song ‘don’t fucking call me’?
Oh, it’s been the same guy since ‘Madison Tapes’!
That’s one of my favourite tracks; a distorted ode to post-breakup loneliness. It’s moodier and different tonally to the other tracks on the album…
I wrote the lyrics a few years before I recorded the song. I was processing shame around loneliness and being alone. Especially now, here in New York there’s this pervasive attitude of “I don’t care about people”, this strain of hyper-individualism. I was taking in my environment, feeling shame about wanting connection and that’s why I wrote the lyrics “you’re born alone, you’ll die the same.” I was just trying to talk myself through that lonely feeling and process of feeling ashamed about it.
Your Mother weaves in and out of the narrative as you motion through your own relationships. On ‘I’m certain she’s there’ you hauntingly tell the story of this girl that goes missing. Talk me through your relationship with your mom and why fragments of this relationship permeate this record…
My Mum was a teenage mom. She was deeply traumatised. The reality is she didn’t have the support that she needed to successfully be a child herself, and also raise a child. There was no compassion for the fact that she’s a child and she doesn’t have a support system. The relationship that I have with her is very sparse; years go by in between us seeing each other. It’s traumatic for her and it’s always been a hard, bitter pill to swallow. In turn, my interactions with her have always ended up being traumatic for me and it’s a cycle that we go through. I’m at a point now where I’m learning to accept that maybe this is a relationship where love is the distance. The loving thing to do is to keep the distance so that we can heal.
Healing and making sense of the chaos around and within black women is a core part of your artistry. Are you aware of the impact you have on impressionable listeners?
I always think about myself first and hope people find comfort in that. How can my imagination be bigger? How can I dream bigger? What can I imagine for my life, for my relationships, the joy that I want to bring in my life, the experiences that I want to bring into my life? It has to start with you.
The beauty of this record is that you don’t have the answers or the blueprint on how to survive but there is forward momentum steering you – there is a destination in sight. Have you found a measure of peace?
It’s a work in progress. I have a lot more peace than last year and I’m moving in the right direction. I need rest and time to tend to me as a person. I’ve been in artist mode for a really long stretch of time and I don’t foresee it changing for a while. I’m always going to be an artist. But I think I’ll need to take a little break, a vacation – I need a vacation! I’m able to admit that I need a vacation which is a good sign that I’m here and I’m taking care of myself.
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‘Remember Your North Star’ is out now.
Words: Shahzaib Hussain
Photo Credit: Lawrence Agyei
