Yaya Bey

Yaya Bey shapes an offbeat strain of R&B by penning verses that blend poetic detail with stark honesty when addressing her own experiences and the wider dimensions of Black womanhood. Classic soul serves as the chief influence, yet jazz and hip-hop also leave clear marks, while her Southern and Bajan lineage surfaces audibly throughout the work. Based in Brooklyn, the singer, songwriter, and multidisciplinary artist first drew attention in 2016 via The Many Alter-Egos of Trill'eta Brown. After issuing a pair of further projects, she emerged as a central force in reviving the Big Dada imprint, beginning with the 2021 EP The Things I Can't Take with Me and the 2022 album Remember Your North Star. The 2023 EP Exodus the North Star came next, setting the stage for Ten Fold, her 2024 full-length whose themes encompassed everything from soaring living expenses to personal empowerment.

As the child of Grand Daddy I.U.—the rapper and producer whose career began in hip-hop’s golden era on the respected Cold Chillin’ label—Bey grew up in Jamaica, Queens. Her childhood bedroom also functioned as her father’s recording space, an arrangement that led her to compose her earliest hooks while still a young teenager. At 18 she relocated to Washington, D.C., where she threw herself into artistic and activist circles, holding positions at museums and libraries, performing with the band Gully Waters, and later serving as a street medic during the Ferguson protests in Missouri.

Her background and the writings of Audre Lorde guided her 2016 solo debut, the spare, intimate EP The Many Alter-Egos of Trill'eta Brown, which also appeared alongside a book and digital collage. She proceeded deliberately toward the shorter yet equally weighty follow-up This Too…, navigating several abandoned versions while experiencing an engagement, marriage, and divorce from her principal musical partner at the time before releasing it in 2019. The next year’s Madison Tapes broadened the sonic palette yet retained the unfiltered immediacy of prior work. Bey then aligned with the Ninja Tune-distributed Big Dada, making her label debut in 2021 with the EP The Things I Can't Take with Me.

She continued tracing her personal and artistic development on the 2022 album Remember Your North Star. Almost entirely self-produced, the record wove reggae and Afrobeat into a fabric of reflective ballads, charged slow jams, and fluid dance rhythms. The 2023 EP Exodus the North Star added reggae, house, and jazz colors, with Jay Daniel co-producing “12 Houses Down” and Exaktly appearing on “Ascendant (Mother Fxcker).” On the 2024 full-length Ten Fold, Bey again enlisted Daniel and Exaktly while also bringing in Corey Fonville of Butcher Brown, DJ Harrison, Karriem Riggins, and Boston Chery.