Yaya Bey: “Capitalism is exploitation, period”

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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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