{"id":15666,"date":"2025-06-26T07:11:08","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T07:11:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/15666\/"},"modified":"2025-06-26T07:11:08","modified_gmt":"2025-06-26T07:11:08","slug":"yaya-bey-do-it-afraid-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/15666\/","title":{"rendered":"Yaya Bey: do it afraid Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earl Sweatshirt<\/a> once coined<\/a> the phrase \u201cmirror raps\u201d to describe the ego-boosting rhymes he\u2019d say to himself before leaving home. Where prayers and mantras are aspirational and assuaging, mirror raps are declarative, statements of fact. \u201cLook in the mirror and what do I see?\/Only the nigga I wanted to be,\u201d he raps with brio on the Samiyam<\/a> song \u201cMirror<\/a>.\u201d Yaya Bey<\/a> asserts the same quiet confidence in spurts on her sixth album, a set of alternatingly cocksure and searching tracks on which she fights through her woes. \u201cIt\u2019s a recession, they don\u2019t say it but shit I know it is\/This shit depression, I don\u2019t say it but shit I know it is,\u201d she reveals on the opener, weary but determined. Her mirror raps prod and nudge rather than flatter, but the bluntness is galvanizing\u2014she still makes it out the house.<\/p>\n

do it afraid chronicles the labor of finding and holding onto joy, swinging from cheery dance cuts to yearning R&B to slick raps. The Queens-born, Brooklyn-based singer, rapper, and producer has long straddled emotions and genres, but this record is consciously sprawling and liquid, the flux matching her wavering resolve. Prioritizing atmosphere over narrative, Yaya spends the album pushing herself to overcome her fears and hang-ups. Wherever love can be found, she wants to be there, singing its praises, enraging her haters, and \u201cthrowing that ass around,\u201d as she purrs on \u201cin a circle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yaya helms the bulk of the production, assisted by BADBADNOTGOOD<\/a>, Nigel Hall, and various members of Virginia jazz fusion band Butcher Brown<\/a>. The arrangements cycle through keys, strings, and horns, with percussion that patters and sways more often than it knocks. On the dance tracks, which span lovers rock, soca, and house, the drums gain some heft and the basslines acquire a little thump, but the mood remains leisurely. While do it afraid doesn\u2019t have the snap and verve of the more structured Ten Fold<\/a>, there\u2019s a charming coziness to its loose sound. These open-aired songs evoke backyards and block parties, the rhythms gentle as breezes.<\/p>\n

Playing on that easygoing mood, the lyrics are often hopeful and dreamy. Her broken heart becomes a bottomless well on \u201craisins,\u201d a fuzzy neo-soul joint. \u201cFill it up, fill it up\/With everything I dreamed of,\u201d she implores, her voice melting into the piano chords. On \u201creal yearners unite,\u201d she showers a lover with praise, floating over what sounds like a sample of a zither or guzheng<\/a>. \u201cAs the sun sets on your skin, I can\u2019t think of a single place I\u2019ve been\/That\u2019s better than right now,\u201d she swoons. These songs celebrate romance\u2019s simplest forms: an adjacent body, a flattering glance, cuddles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Earl Sweatshirt once coined the phrase \u201cmirror raps\u201d to describe the ego-boosting rhymes he\u2019d say to himself before…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":15667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[1939,171,975,67,132,68,1940],"class_list":{"0":"post-15666","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-albums","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-music","11":"tag-united-states","12":"tag-unitedstates","13":"tag-us","14":"tag-web"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114748423446046032","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}