Yaya Bey
Ten Fold
BIG DADA
Looking for the silver lining beyond the death knells and expelled hopes that filled 2022’s folksy R&B/reggae-inspired Remember Your North Star has—for Yaya Bey—meant holding onto the chunky melodic hooks of her recent past while grieving the death of her father (rapper Grand Daddy IU) and finding room for romance and joy. With a pliably husky soulful voice as wide and open as a sunshiny Sunday morning, Ten Fold sees Brooklyn’s Bey swimming around the lip of the Great Beyond through the harsh realities of opener “Crying Through My Teeth” and its mesmerizing musicality before transforming emotional lumps of coal into gorgeous shining diamonds on “The Evidence” and its lyrics laced with evolving energy (“I been changing under all this pressure into something that shines”).
Refusing to be down or stay down, Bey lifts herself through the neo-poppy positive declarations of “East Coast Mami” and the syrup-thick basslines and sexual healing of “Carl Thomas Sliding Down the Wall.” Bey even finds the time to dance with abandon, smile through affirmation, and romp through disgust at local politics on the surround-sound disco of “Sir Princess Bad Bitch” and “Eric Adams in the Club.” Though the composer-vocalist is certainly still mourning the loss of her father (his voice appears throughout Ten Fold like a specter at the spin of it all), if she has the energy to diss the Mayor and playfully look to sex as something gleeful, Yaya Bey is going to wind up alright.
