Yaya Bey

ABOUT this week’s guest:

Maybe it’s the Gemini in me, but I love duality, and when it comes to the arts, I feel right at home with multidisciplinary creatives, especially ones that are fiercely independent and disruptors of the status quo. So, besides being a fan of Yaya Bey’s music, which itself draws from a wide sonic palette including r&b, hip hop, soca, reggae, dance music, disco, soul, and jazz, I’m a huge admirer of her output as a multi-hyphenate artist and activist. She is a visual artist who has shown her collages in New York galleries, curated art programs, as well as doing her own illustrations and visuals for her albums, and choreographed her own music videos. She is a poet, an educator, a producer, and an outspoken political activist. First and foremost, Yaya Bey is a songwriter. Growing up in Queens, New York as the daughter of hip-hop artist Grand Daddy I.U., she was already gifted with the pen at a young age, helping her father write songs. This year marks the 10th anniversary of her ambitious, 2016 mostly acoustic debut 10-track EP and multimedia project, The Many Alter-Egos of Trill’eta Brown which included an EP, a book, and a digital collage which were all years in the making, and was inspired by feminist writer Audre Lorde's famed biomythography, as Yaya explored the multi-faceted sides of Black womanhood. Since then, Yaya’s discography has grown at a dizzying pace, and on the heels of releasing her acclaimed 2025 album Do It Afraid, she returned this April with her excellent seventh album, Fidelity. I caught up with Yaya in Brooklyn a couple of weeks ago, and I'm so thrilled to share our conversation with you as we welcome Yaya Bey as this week’s Shero in the spotlight.