Yaya Bey only recommends her friends' records, and says why

In May 2024 Bandcamp Daily asked Yaya Bey what she was listening to, around the release of Ten Fold, her album dated 10 May.

The answer came as six records from the Bandcamp catalogue. In this case the criterion is more interesting than the picks, because it has nothing to do with taste.

The artists she wanted to talk about are all friends, people she came up with in the Brooklyn scene over the last decade.

The communal relationship that I have to music is unmatched. I have a good time when I’m fellowshipping. When it’s just the homies, when I’m with the band, with people, and I feel safe.

One note, because she says it in the interview herself: Yaya Bey uses she/they pronouns.

Saint Mela, “First Bloom”

The first pick is a record by the singer Wolf Weston, and Bey introduces it with a caveat about how she intends to talk about it.

“I don’t necessarily subscribe to hierarchies of talent, so I’m going to phrase it this way: She’s one of the most profound songwriters that I know.”

Then the part that is not about music: “And she is kind and is actually who the music is saying she is.”

Her verdict on why Weston has not got where she should is not passed on the record but on the listeners: we lack imagination.

Listen while you read

H31R, “HeadSpace”

Maassai and J Words, who make up H31R, are her label mates, and here she talks as somebody who works stages.

She notes something precise about live performance: sometimes people perform and, without the crowd’s attention, the force of the words goes over people’s heads. With H31R the audience is actually listening.

On J Words she adds a line that says how things stand in that trade: people are glad to see a woman producer, because in that space there are few of them.

V.C.R, “The Chronicles of a Caterpillar: The Egg”

The third pick is a musician who turns up on other people’s records, from Pink Siifu to the André 3000 project being talked about at the time.

What Bey hears in it is old funk, and that starts the one piece of theory in the list: historically, she says, funk is whimsical, and she lines up Funkadelic, Bootsy Collins and their descendants.

“Humor is a vehicle for wisdom,” she adds, “which is also a very Black thing. Black people will say, ‘We laugh about everything,’ but we laugh about things to not be defeated by them.”

Black Rave Culture, “BRC Vol 2”

The last pick is the project of three DJs from Washington, and one of the three is her brother.

The reason she gives is the one you give watching a friend up close: it is good to see people you know make records that are good and coherent, and that you can dance to.

Then comes the political part, and it is not a garnish: in electronic music, she says, there still is not much room for Black people. “Which is crazy, because we made this shit.”

Listen while you read

Four of the six picks can be heard outside Bandcamp too. The other two cannot, and it is worth saying which.

What it says about how she listens

The line that explains the whole list is not about any of the six records. It is about Donny Hathaway.

Bey describes hearing certain Hathaway records for the first time and feeling something that moved her beyond words. Then the conclusion: she is not trying to replicate that music, she is trying to replicate that visceral response.

With that criterion in hand, a list made entirely of friends stops looking like a favour and becomes a method: you pick what you have watched happen in a room.

We lined up the four records as if they were one, and what holds them together is not a shared sound: it is that none of the four seems built to end up on a playlist.