Yaya Bey is the first major confirmation for the NOS Alive’23 WTF Clubbing, on the first day of the festival that celebrates its 15th edition.
Yaya Bey is one of the most exciting storytellers in today’s R&B landscape. Using a combination of ancestral strengths and her own self-realization, the singer/songwriter seamlessly navigates life’s struggles and joyous moments through music. Bey’s latest album, Remember Your North Star, captures this emotional roller coaster with a soul-feeding fusion of soul, jazz, reggae, afrobeat, and hip-hop. Her talent for storytelling is further highlighted in the album’s first single, “keisha“. It’s a hymn to women who gave their all in a relationship, but their bodies or their state of mind were never enough.
Bey’s ability to explore the emotionally kaleidoscopic nature of women, in particular black women, is the essence of the album. With themes of misogynoir (misogyny targeting black women), revealing generational trauma, lighthearted romance, parental relationships, female empowerment, and self-love, Remember Your North Star proves that the path to healing is not linear – there are many lessons to be learned. along the journey.
“I saw a tweet that said, ‘Black women have never seen healthy love or been loved in a healthy way.’ This is a deep wound in us. So I started thinking about our responses to this as women of color,” says Bey of the title inspiration for Remember Your North Star, an all-artist-penned project with main production by her own. “This album is something like my thesis. Even though we need to be all these different types of women, ultimately, we want love: love for ourselves and love for our community. The album is a reminder of that goal.”
Her first release The Many Alter-Egos of Trill’eta Brown in 2016, which incorporated a digital collage and book, was praised by FADER, Essence, and other outlets. Bey followed with other critically acclaimed projects such as 2020’s Madison Tapes album and 2021’s The Things I Can’t Take With Me EP.
Bey is also a critically acclaimed multidisciplinary artist and art curator, who through her music creates art through intimate photo collages and self-portraits. In 2019, she was featured in the District of Columbia Arts Center’s “Reparations Realized” exhibit and Brooklyn’s Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) “Let the Circle Be Unbroken” exhibit. The artist has also completed several artist residencies at MoCADA, curating programs that reflect the same theme that drives her music: the black female experience.
Remember Your North Star continues Bey’s personal and artistic evolution as the artist strives to be a sounding board for women of color around the world. “I feel empowered in music because I can turn anything that happens to me into something valuable. Music helps me see the value in what is happening in my life,” she explains. “There is a spirit in music. It’s a culture and I’m in that community, contributing my story that keeps us connected.”
This is Yaya Bey’s debut at NOS Alive, which performs at WTF Clubbing, on the first day of the 15th edition of the festival.
Confirmed artists: Angel Olsen, Arctic Monkeys, Branko, City and Color, girl in red, IDLES, Jacob Collier, Linda Martini, Lizzo, Machine Gun Kelly, Men I Trust, Nathaniel Rateliff & The Night Sweats, Puscifer, Queens of the Stone Age, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Rina Sawayama, Sam Smith, Spoon, Sylvan Esso, Tash Sultana, The Amazons, The Black Keys, The Drive Era, Xinobi and Yaya Bey.
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