Yaya Bey - The Things I Can't Take With Me

The Guardian 0

(Big Dada)
The New Yorker shows her gift for storytelling on an EP that blends the personal and the political

Yaya Bey’s music is rooted in something far gutsier than just smoky vocals. The Queens-born singer takes inspiration from black feminist theory, with her last album, The Many Alter-Egos of Trill’eta Brown, drawing on the writings of Audre Lorde. She often blends the personal (bad breakups) and the political (black liberation) with poetic wordplay.

The Things I Can’t Take With Me is a smooth soul record boasting a conversational delivery reminiscent of Jill Scott and Noname. On The Root of a Thing, Bey is candid about her parents: “I never seen my daddy treat a woman good.” She’s at her best when she’s being transparent: while her vocal range isn’t mind-blowing, her storytelling is absorbing. Industry Love/A Protection Spell, about a man with a collapsed moral compass working in music, could be the plot line of a short film.

This EP came together unexpectedly during the making of a forthcoming studio album, and it sometimes shows. You Up? and We’ll Skate Soon feel like unfinished drafts in comparison with the bold and brass-heavy Fxck It Then and September 13th – a song that knows exactly what it wants to be: a heartbreak classic. “Loving you baby been gruesome,” Bey sings, with the hindsight of an old wounded soul.