Who is Yaya Bey, New York activist and figure of desillusioned soul?

By Alexis Thibault.

Published on 22 April 2024. Updated on 20 July 2026.

Yaya Bey, a musician lost in a comedy drama

Hidaiyah Bey took a few seconds to digest the question she’d been asked… “If you could spend a whole week inside a work of fiction, which one would you choose?” The answer came with a smile: “A comedy drama!” A fitting choice for the 35-year-old American singer. Like her personal life, her music feels tender, fierce, wild, charming, lively and disillusioned all at once.

Hailing from Barbados, Yaya Bey, as she is known, grew up in New York with her father and cousins at a time when Queens was the place to be. Now based in Washington, the artist feels nostalgic talking about the brown-brick buildings of her childhood neighbourhood. “I remember the revving cars, the sound of basketballs, the music pouring from the windows, the children’s shouts and fights…” The destiny of this young dance and literature aficionada seemed to be all set out for her. Especially, given the fact that her father was none other than Ayub Bey, better known as Grand Daddy IU, a rap member of the 1980s hip-hop collective Juice Crew.

That was up until her father did all he could to dissuade her from following in his footsteps, convinced there was no way she could make it in the industry. An only child, she found solace in poetry and political activism, observing, powerless, the way her father treated the women in his life with a certain disdain. To make it, she had to fight harder than everyone else. As a strong advocate for African-American and women’s rights, she spent years demonstrating in Washington, using her spare time to write about her own life and her daily routine, which she would then use as lyrics to her music.

Diana Ross, Erykah Badu, Frankie Beverly and Toni Morrison

Everything accelerated when she was “discovered” by the producer Chucky Thompson, who worked with the rapper Nas and with Mary J. Blige. Bey began to write, without much conviction, for other artists. It wasn’t until 2016 that she finally released her first studio album, inspired by her years of activism. As an artist, she didn’t do things by halves, since the The Many Alter-Egos of Trill’eta Brown includes not only ten tracks but also a book and a digital collage that together form a complex Gestamtkunstwerk recalling the work of Audre Lorde, the queer essayist and poet who took part in the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Bey had long understood that she could count only on herself, and so took on the role of a strong, determined, perfectionist woman, her introspective albums tackling themes such as childhood trauma (her mother’s abandonment of her), the rows and doubts, but also the joy and the amorous passion that for her is akin to addiction.

Bey’s music is perhaps easier to understand if one dissects her tastes. She likes the elegance of Diana Ross and the wildness of Tina Turner; the humour of Richard Pryor and the literary descriptions of Toni Morrison; Chaka Khan and Donny Hathaway’s hits; Erykah Badu’s groove; and also the voice of Frankie Beverly, the singer in the group Maze. As for her own music, she suggests three tracks as an introduction to her world: Nobody Knows (2022), Meet Me in Brooklyn (2022), and September 13th (2021).

Ten Fold, a critically-acclaimed fifth album

Her fifth studio album, Ten Fold, saw the day of light on May 10th, 2024. Yaya Bey made the record because she simply couldn’t do otherwise. Used to manage every aspect of her projects, with a precise plan down to the tiniest detail, this one was different. She needed to escape and forget. “To be honest, I don’t really know what to say about this album,” she shared. “I lost my father in December 2022, so I got busy in order to flee my sadness. And I carried on making music. The producers I usually work with would send me samples and I would write. I just stayed home and wrote.”

These past few years, she has been working hard on her music. In 2022, she released Remember Your North Star, a sumptuous album that deftly mixes jazz, soul, R’n’B, and reggae beats. Her six-track EP, Exodus the North Star, followed in 2023. Her work has been unanimously praised by critics, with its paradoxical blend of colourful sound and deep social issues, such as greed or misogyny — a combined discrimination directed towards Black women and theorized by the African American researcher and activist Moya Bailey in her 2010 essay They Aren’t Talking About Me…

Do It Again, Yaya Bey’s intropective record

In 2025, the singer unveiled a new album that she described as “a commitment to embracing life as it comes, finding peace in the power of human relationships, even when life’s circumstances leave people scarred and afraid.” Expect a rich blend of R&B, hip-hop, soul and jazz, with standout collaborations featuring the collectives BADBADNOTGOOD and Butcher Brown.

Yaya Bey crafted a free-spirited record that feels like an emotional road trip in the middle of a heatwave. From the opening track, Wake up btch*, she blasts against systemic exhaustion, delivering a hushed rap over ramshackle keyboards. It is the art of resisting with grace in a world on the verge of collapse. The album unfolds instinctively. Grooves settle beneath the skin, filtered club rhythms pulse throughout, spectral jazz drifts in and out, and expansive nu-soul textures stretch out like an endless summer.

To date, Yaya Bey has already exhibited her collage work in several galleries and completed two residencies at Brooklyn’s Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA). She also creates her own merchandise illustrations, designs the cover art for her records and choreographs her own music videos. Powerful and flamboyant, the artist also knows when to reveal her vulnerability, much like the heroine of a dramedy.

Do It Again (2025) and Fidelity (Yaya Bey album) (2026) by Yaya Bey are out now.