Yaya Bey, in Transit
The New York singer-songwriter is in a constant state of evolution on her new album, Ten Fold.
Photo by Nikita Freyermuth
Yaya Bey is firmly planted in the power and patience of healing—healing from the loss of her dad (rapper Grand Daddy I.U., who died in 2022); healing from the often overwhelming demands of being a breakout musician; healing from the weight of the world. It’s fitting, then, that her music closely embraces that journey—creating an intimate connection with listeners in search of the same healing.
On the 2021 EP The Things I Can’t Take with Me, the Queens-bred singer-songwriter detailed a harrowing journey of trying to love when family trauma impacts your interior life and misogynoir impacts your exterior responsibilities. On her glorious debut album, 2022’s Remember Your North Star, Bey found triumph in that struggle—affirming that the love she desires is possible. The following year, she continued that arc with Exodus the North Star, a buoyant, lovey-dovey soundscape that centered Bey completely surrendering to that love.
Now, with her new album Ten Fold, Bey kicks into a new groove: freedom. And not just any kind of freedom—she rests in a freedom of knowing when to let go when the world around you is constantly changing. Bey is ever-evolving. “I just felt maybe less in control, and I probably gave into that,” Bey says. “My life was just changing a lot—drastically and fast— and there wasn’t really anything I could do about that, so I kind of just went with the flow. I guess there’s some freedom in that, but I don’t know that it felt how I imagined freedom feeling like. It didn’t necessarily feel good all the time. But, it just felt like something I just had to surrender to.
Indeed, Ten Fold, sounds like Bey’s most liberating music to date. It’s a 16-track thesis on the essence of survival. In an Instagram post about the album, Bey described it as a “recording of the year I lost the things I thought I could not live without and the proof that I did indeed survive… and thrive.” Bey, who is always making music ( she’s already halfway done with her next album) started making Ten Fold in January 2023. “Crying Through My Teeth” was the first song she made for the LP; the track, the album’s opener, is a soothing jazz balm that sounds like something you’d hear from the most popular artist at an open mic. It’s just that poetic, and Bey introduces listeners to an artist who uses humor to cope with her struggles (“Do you want to hear a joke / See I got all this money and I’m still fuckin broke”).
Although Ten Fold is partially inspired by her father’s death, it wasn’t a primary impetus for making the album. “I was in a place where I was gonna have to make the next album anyway,” Bey says. “That’s kind of the appropriate response to the momentum is to keep the momentum going like ok we’re going to have to make another album. Then, my dad died. I guess I really just threw myself into it just to keep myself busy and distract myself. I was going to have to make it anyway, I think it may have accelerated the rate in which I made the album and how hard I went making it.”
In turn, Ten Fold sounds like the type of music you play when in dire need of motivation to get by. Sometimes it’s a cathartic gospel. Sometimes it’s a laugh-out-loud satirical croon. And other times, it’s just a free-flowing pose. Bey’s sense of humor shines. It’s a source of her survival (“things shift so much that all you can kind of do about it is try to laugh at it,” she tells me). There are songs like the laugh-out-loud “Eric Adams in the Club,” which critiques the ways in which the New York mayor seeks to be the life of the party amid residents struggling to pay rent. There’s also the super romantic “Carl Thomas Sliding Down the Wall”—a nod to the ‘90’s R&B singer whose music instantly conjures the amatory feelings that one works so hard to suppress.
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