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SPENT: Episode One | Yaya Bey
SPENT: Episode One | Yaya Bey
Yaya Bey has built one of the most singular voices in contemporary music not by chasing consensus, but by trusting her own sense of practice. Across albums that move through R&B, house, soul, poetry, and memory, their work resists easy categorization - and she’s increasingly uninterested in trying to make it legible to people who insist on misunderstanding it.
In this conversation, recorded ahead of the release of her new album Fidelity, Yaya sits down with Ajay Kurian for a wide-ranging discussion about what it means to make work on your own terms while navigating an industry that often wants to flatten artists into narratives that are easier to sell.
Yaya speaks candidly about the limits of criticism, who gets positioned as the authority to interpret Black art, and what happens when audiences project meaning onto work instead of listening to what the artist is actually saying.
Devotion to making music. Devotion to curiosity. Devotion to continuing even when the systems around you are exploitative, unstable, or actively discouraging. Yaya Bey talks openly about the realities of being a working musician - record deals, touring economics, budgets, labels, expectations, and the invisible labor that exists behind an artist’s public life. What emerges isn’t cynicism, but a kind of grounded determination: a belief that creativity survives because people keep making things anyway.
Yaya describes hope not as optimism but as discipline: if you want to be free, you have to believe freedom is possible even when it feels impossible. Otherwise you begin believing in your own defeat.
Hosted by Ajay KurianEdited by Peter GroppeProduced by NewCrits
Yaya’s New Album, Fidelity:
https://yayabey.bandcamp.com/album/fidelity
Yaya’s Substack:
https://substack.com/@yayabeybay?utm_source=global-search
Upcoming Show Dates:
https://www.bandsintown.com/a/15521055-yaya-bey?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQPOTM2NjE5NzQzMzkyNDU5AAGn-QGJBp8sdAH4IFe4bEeCmP3lrQR-VKQfb8hkYbMxaEaXsUZ1vfEY29Xw4Yo_aem_swM1Nk76aGvpG-4j_ajAFQ
00:00 — Intro
05:00 — Misreading the Work
08:00 — Who Gets to Interpret Black Art
12:35 — Grief, Joy, and Refusing the Assigned Story
15:45 — Being Polarizing / Being Protected
19:00 — The Politics of Interpretation
23:40 — Grief Beyond the Self
27:35 — Refusing Other People’s Narratives
35:20 — The Industry, Capital, and Finding Your People
41:30 — Discomfort as a Teacher
48:40 — Community, Poetry, and Becoming an Artist
52:00 — Becoming a Working Musician
57:15 — Loss, Stability, and Living Through Contradiction
1:00:00 — Making a Life, Not Just a Career
1:09:35 — Curiosity as Practice
1:12:30 — Outro
Get full access to NewCrits Substack at newcrits.substack.com/subscribe
View all episodes
By with Ajay KurianSPENT: Episode One | Yaya Bey
Yaya Bey has built one of the most singular voices in contemporary music not by chasing consensus, but by trusting her own sense of practice. Across albums that move through R&B, house, soul, poetry, and memory, their work resists easy categorization - and she’s increasingly uninterested in trying to make it legible to people who insist on misunderstanding it.
In this conversation, recorded ahead of the release of her new album Fidelity, Yaya sits down with Ajay Kurian for a wide-ranging discussion about what it means to make work on your own terms while navigating an industry that often wants to flatten artists into narratives that are easier to sell.
Yaya speaks candidly about the limits of criticism, who gets positioned as the authority to interpret Black art, and what happens when audiences project meaning onto work instead of listening to what the artist is actually saying.
Devotion to making music. Devotion to curiosity. Devotion to continuing even when the systems around you are exploitative, unstable, or actively discouraging. Yaya Bey talks openly about the realities of being a working musician - record deals, touring economics, budgets, labels, expectations, and the invisible labor that exists behind an artist’s public life. What emerges isn’t cynicism, but a kind of grounded determination: a belief that creativity survives because people keep making things anyway.
Yaya describes hope not as optimism but as discipline: if you want to be free, you have to believe freedom is possible even when it feels impossible. Otherwise you begin believing in your own defeat.
Hosted by Ajay KurianEdited by Peter GroppeProduced by NewCrits
Yaya’s New Album, Fidelity:
https://yayabey.bandcamp.com/album/fidelity
Yaya’s Substack:
https://substack.com/@yayabeybay?utm_source=global-search
Upcoming Show Dates:
https://www.bandsintown.com/a/15521055-yaya-bey?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio&fbclid=PAZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAc3J0YwZhcHBfaWQPOTM2NjE5NzQzMzkyNDU5AAGn-QGJBp8sdAH4IFe4bEeCmP3lrQR-VKQfb8hkYbMxaEaXsUZ1vfEY29Xw4Yo_aem_swM1Nk76aGvpG-4j_ajAFQ
00:00 — Intro
05:00 — Misreading the Work
08:00 — Who Gets to Interpret Black Art
12:35 — Grief, Joy, and Refusing the Assigned Story
15:45 — Being Polarizing / Being Protected
19:00 — The Politics of Interpretation
23:40 — Grief Beyond the Self
27:35 — Refusing Other People’s Narratives
35:20 — The Industry, Capital, and Finding Your People
41:30 — Discomfort as a Teacher
48:40 — Community, Poetry, and Becoming an Artist
52:00 — Becoming a Working Musician
57:15 — Loss, Stability, and Living Through Contradiction
1:00:00 — Making a Life, Not Just a Career
1:09:35 — Curiosity as Practice
1:12:30 — Outro
Get full access to NewCrits Substack at newcrits.substack.com/subscribe