‘I was sad in a way I never knew possible’: Yaya Bey on grief, poverty and using music as therapy

The end of a marriage, the chaos of Covid and the death of her father hit the R&B auteur hard. But she says that she has found beauty in despair“My life has been a whirlwind,” sighs Yaya Bey. Across a turbulent near-decade, the R&B auteur has weathered divorce and bereavement, relocated from Washington DC back home to New York and wrested control of her musical direction. Her 2022 breakthrough, Remember Your North Star, fused homespun neo-soul with hip-hop