Dropping somebody near you’ll be able to really feel like a rupture in time. How can the solar proceed to rise? How can the world hold transferring? The disorientation of being essentially altered in grief motivates Yaya Bey’s transcendent new album, Ten Fold. “My nigga left the world and the world ain’t cease,” she quietly raps on “yvette’s cooking present.” The Queens-raised artist recorded the album within the 12 months following the demise of her father, Ayub Bey—the emcee and producer Grand Daddy I.U., who was a member of the pioneering hip-hop collective Juice Crew and a towering determine in Bey’s life. Funeral prices compelled her to maintain working and over the course of a 12 months, she made music with none agency plans. The outcomes, whittled right down to 16 tracks, are snapshots of an artist transferring by loss as she navigates monetary and emotional precarity and the vicissitudes of romance. It’s a finely detailed portrait of grief that additionally celebrates the fullness of life.
The ripples of Yaya Bey’s day-to-day are small, however in her delicate fingers, they’re strikingly resonant. Ten Fold not often dwells on the previous, selecting as an alternative to mark the passage of time by cataloging the emotions that sprouted alongside the best way—disappointment, defiance, pleasure, frustration, delight, love. Masterful sequencing and economical writing (most songs are below three minutes) enable Bey to be as nimble as ever. After asserting the grief that “weighs heavy” on her, she briskly wipes her tears to have fun her blooming potential on the pocket-disco music “chrysanthemums.” She finds “fly shit” on the thrift retailer on “east coast mami” to challenge the boldness wanted to make energy strikes. Relationships fizzle and develop; lease stays too rattling excessive. Collectively, the album appears like a Black lady simply attempting to get by.
In line with her 2022 breakout album, Keep in mind Your North Star, Bey pulls from the hotter colours of a Black musical palette—Soulquarians-style neo-soul, upbeat funk, home, and increase bap. The manufacturing, assisted by Corey Fonville of the genre-melding jazz-hop band Butcher Brown, feels cozy and self-soothing. She faucets into familiarity, but resists complacency. The album opens with the simmering melancholy of “crying by my tooth,” which like its religious ancestor “Didn’t Cha Know,” carries a world of feeling within the easiest of phrases. The place songs like “no one is aware of” on North Star described vivid characters and scenes, Ten Fold’s tales are summary, unfolding like an prolonged internal monologue. The spare home beat of “sir princess dangerous bitch” is demo-like, and its round chorus (“The gorgeous factor about me/Is each little stunning factor/Is on its technique to me”) sounds just like the form of made-up music you sing to maintain your self afloat. Directing the affirmations inward permits Bey to skillfully sidestep platitudes: emotions come up spontaneously and inconstantly from all throughout the emotional spectrum. Even the songs explicitly about different individuals really feel insular, just like the blooming romance of “sluggish dancing within the kitchen.” The sunny reggae minimize has the gossamer high quality of a daydream or a gaze directed towards a lover.
