Yaya Bey: “Capitalism is exploitation, period”

This Q+A was first fea­tured in Huck’s cul­ture newslet­ter. Sign up to the mail­ing list here for more exclu­sive inter­views, cul­tur­al dis­patch­es and month­ly recommendations.

Yaya Bey wrote ​‘raisins’ last sum­mer on the way to Lon­don, while the singer was tour­ing her 2024 album Ten Fold. The song – a dreamy, jazzy, soul num­ber record­ed at a gen­tle, fin­ger-click­ing pace – is the fifth track out of 18 on her upcom­ing expan­sive album do it afraid, which is set to release on June 20. It comes just 13 months since her last 18 track odyssey, and is an ode to stay­ing resilient.

“When I wrote ​‘raisins’, I real­ly need­ed to emote,” she explains. ​“When you go on tour, a lot of times you’re just going, going, going, but you don’t check in with your emo­tions. DJ Har­ri­son sent me this record and I wrote it, and as soon as it played, I cried – it was just a real­ly good release.”

As with much of her pre­vi­ous music, do it afraid is a huge­ly ambi­tious and diverse project, span­ning a huge range of tem­pos and moods – stripped-back R&B, deep house, dis­co, rap and even sun­ny soca. It’s a scarce­ly believ­able pro­fi­cien­cy, and from its hand-rais­ing highs to som­bre, ten­der slow jams, the record nar­rates the com­plex­i­ty of the human experience.

The daugh­ter of rap­per and hip-hop pro­duc­er Ayub Bey aka Grand Dad­dy I.U. – who passed away as she was cre­at­ing her last album – Yaya first began writ­ing music at the age of nine. Being around music all of her life has giv­en her a well-lensed look at the indus­try, and all of its exploita­tive pit­falls. Now, the singer just wants to make music free of its con­straints. To find out more about the record, I caught up with the singer as she gears up for the album’s release, speak­ing about break­ing nar­ra­tives as a Black woman, putting a mon­e­tary val­ue on work, and refus­ing to bow down to others.

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Con­grat­u­la­tions on do it afraid. What should fans expect?

There’s a lot of dif­fer­ent sounds that all kind of blend togeth­er. It’s pret­ty nuanced, it goes to dif­fer­ent ranges of emotion.

Much of the nar­ra­tive around your last album sur­round­ed grief and trau­ma, what’s dif­fer­ent about do it afraid?

I don’t think my last album explored grief and trau­ma. I think that I was signed to a label that failed to pro­tect me from Euro­pean voyeurism, and so they fetishised the idea that I make music about grief and trau­ma. But Ten Fold was actu­al­ly an album of affir­ma­tions. It was an album to uplift myself, and I did touch on grief on two songs in an 18-song album. But a lot of it was about love, fun and hope.

Where does do it afraid fit in with that?

When­ev­er I make an album, I think about where I am in life. And right now, I am try­ing to real­ly allow myself to feel every­thing – to feel afraid, you know? With the last album I kept run­ning into [nar­ra­tives] say­ing that this is an album about grief and trau­ma, or that it wasn’t doing as well as the album before. I real­ly went through the ringer with it. So it’s scary to put this album out because of that, and hav­ing to face that. Also, the last time I put an album out was right after my life had changed, and I offi­cial­ly had a career that I could make a liv­ing off of it, and I was just work­ing, work­ing, work­ing to main­tain that.

Now I’m in a place where I have some time off this sum­mer, and I want to hang out with my friends, I want to have fun, I want to be with my part­ner and I want to enjoy life – it’s a lit­tle bit about every­thing. do it afraid is about life. I think that some­times I have to have these pro­found answers, when real­ly my life is just like every person’s – it’s nuanced, there are things that are going right in my life and there are things that I wish I could fuck­ing change. But just like every­body else, one day I’m hap­py, then some­one says some­thing that trig­gers me and it makes me sad, and then I bounce back again and I’m hap­py. So I think it’s unfair when peo­ple say: ​“Oh, this is an album about trau­ma.” Because that can’t be all you heard from a record with six dance tracks on it. How did you get that? It’s like you think I’m trapped in the house cry­ing and griev­ing all day – nobody’s life works like that.

It’s only been one year since your last 18-track album, and now you are releas­ing anoth­er. What dri­ves you?

If I feel it, I’m going to do it. I like writ­ing songs, I enjoy it. It’s like if you like to skate­board, you’re going to do it for as long as you like it, and then when you don’t like it any­more you’re going to stop skat­ing. But if you real­ly like to skate­board and someone’s like: ​“Well, now you can’t skate­board,” you’d be like: ​“What the fuck?” So that’s the sit­u­a­tion I was in [with my last label], when they told me that I couldn’t make any more albums and just had to put out sin­gles. Then [hypo­thet­i­cal­ly], if I sign a deal where I owe them two albums, then I’m stuck for longer because I wouldn’t be allowed to put a record out.

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What do you think you’ve learned about the music indus­try, and what would you tell young musi­cians look­ing to break into it?

The music indus­try is a piece of shit. Just like any oth­er work­force, no one is giv­ing you what you’re giv­ing them. Say you work for an elec­tric com­pa­ny in an office, you give them eight hours of your life every day for a fuck­ing pay check – the exchange is nowhere near equal. So if I make an album about my life expe­ri­ences, you can’t put a num­ber on that, and no mat­ter what, you’re going to be out of pock­et. Even if you’ve got a decent deal, like say it’s a 50 – 50 recoup­ment, it’s bull­shit because what I’m giv­ing you is still far greater than what you’re giv­ing me.

Cap­i­tal­ism is exploita­tion, peri­od. But with the music indus­try, you’re not only exploit­ing my labour, but also my enti­ty, my like­ness, my per­son. And then you’ve got stream­ing ser­vices, who are giv­ing you half a pen­ny – how do you even split a pen­ny in half? What the fuck is that? They are giv­ing you noth­ing for every­thing. So to young musi­cians: don’t be afraid to say no, or to shake the table. Espe­cial­ly women and espe­cial­ly Black women – they’re going to call you crazy any­way, so you might as well say what the fuck you’ve got to say.

You’ve spo­ken before about being boxed in as a Black woman, and specif­i­cal­ly Black strug­gle. Can you explain that?

Everyone’s obsessed with me being sad and hav­ing a bad life. They don’t want to hear shit from me if I’m not sad. If you lis­ten to my music from the very begin­ning – yes, there are songs about trau­mat­ic expe­ri­ences, but there are also dance records. I make a lot of songs about hope, I make dance records, and songs about love. And this is what I’m say­ing, my entire career peo­ple have been say­ing to me: ​“I only want to hear you when I’m sad.” And then when I’m sad, you don’t even lis­ten to the speci­fici­ty of what I’m saying.

I feel like the world at the moment feels very bina­ry, like a lot of social media is peo­ple shout­ing oppo­site views at each oth­er. With­in that con­text. How impor­tant is it to you to show the com­plex­i­ty of the human experience?

Peo­ple are always like: ​“Why do Black peo­ple always make every­thing about race?” But it isn’t that we’re mak­ing every­thing about race, it’s that every­body else is. Because my expe­ri­ence has to be racialised and then it’s my respon­si­bil­i­ty as a Black woman to explain how you are racial­is­ing me. So it’s like you get to treat me a cer­tain way and then I have to teach you how not to treat me that way.

Like look at Tay­lor Swift, who’s always cry­ing about how trau­mat­ic her life is. No one’s going: ​“Oh my god, Tay­lor Swift’s life is devoid of joy, and she’s just this poor lit­tle girl.” But someone’s always break­ing her heart and she’s always going to fight through it, but peo­ple aren’t going to reduce her to that.

What does do it afraid mean to you personally?

I just feel grate­ful to be able to do things on my own terms, and grate­ful to be able to release music. I feel grate­ful for the lessons I learned and that it’s okay to be myself. And that being reserved and docile isn’t going to get me any­where – so it’s okay that I show up in the room full in who I am, because peo­ple are going to try and walk all over you any­way, so you might as well make it hard­er for them rather than lay­ing down and being a doormat.

do it afraid by Yaya Bey is out June 20 via drink sum wtr

Isaac Muk is Huck’s dig­i­tal edi­tor. Fol­low him on Bluesky.

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