Yaya Bey – ‘Fidelity’ album review: Grief, identity, and timelessly soulful vocals
Everybody deals with grief differently, and since the tragic passing of her father back in 2022, the R&B stylings of Yaya Bey have been awash with the deeply complex emotions attached to that death. On her latest offering, Fidelity, she returns to that feeling with a new power, exploring her own identity and the ever-changing Black identity of America.
The Skinny: A stark departure from her previous record, the lowercase do it afraid, this new record sees Yaya Bey – rather ironically – refusing to be afraid, and refusing to shy away from the deluge of emotion that this decade has thrust upon her. Whether in the death of her father, her surroundings of Queens, or the continued prevalence of racist repression in the United States, she tackles a wealth of different topics on this album, approaching each with the kind of novel, innovative and, above all else, soulful approach that gives Fidelity something of a timeless appeal.
Throughout the album, the enchanting hip-hop beats provide a near-constant backing track, harking back to Bey’s roots and ties to her father, Grand Daddy IU. Reducing the entirety of this album to being a ‘hip-hop record’, however, would be needlessly reductive. While those beats rarely disappear entirely, they are flanked throughout the record with darts into old-school soul, R&B, and laid-back jazz, hinting both at the diversity of the performer’s talents and of her record collection.
More than that, though, the amalgamation of influences speaks to the core identity of Yaya Bey as a performer. On this album, in particular, the songwriter pays tribute to the rich history of Black artistry in America, and one of the prevailing questions that the album reportedly exists to answer is “what part of that ache [her grief] is specifically Black?” Key themes explored through the runtime include the Black identity in the US and how it is being consistently eroded by the capitalist system.
Inevitably, then, Fidelity feels particularly pertinent to the world we are currently living in, and specifically the world that Black people are living in in the United States. Upon listening to Yaya Bey’s emotive exploration of grief and identity, it is nearly impossible not to connect the dots with the openly admitted racial discrimination at the very core of American society.
It is an album which perfectly reflects its surroundings and timeframe, yet rather skillfully, it manages to balance that atmosphere with a timeless sonic appeal, courtesy of its debt to old-school R&B.
Standout Track: ‘Blue’
The Verdict: Fidelity is not just a collection of 16 R&B-fueled songs, it is also a deeply introspective, personal record, which nevertheless manages to court mass appeal – a task that countless other artists have tried and failed to pull off. Not only does it perfectly exemplify the incredible artistry of the Queens songwriter, but it also offers some notably profound social and human commentary, too.
Release Date: April 17th, 2026 | Producer: Yaya Bey | Label: drink sum wtr
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