SOUNDWAVE: Yaya is Speaking Up For the Everyday Girl
Yaya’s new
Charming, calculated, consistent, and pretty funny are the words that best describe Yaya, the 25-year-old rapper-singer-songwriter from Yonkers, NY. She grew up as the youngest of five and “the Beyoncé of the family,” as she puts it, “who was always ready to perform a new song or dance.” So when her 8th-grade teacher uncovered an affinity for poetry within her, a seed was planted, and she would eventually bloom into the versatile musician that we’ve selected as this month's SOUNDWAVE artist.
After discovering a love for poetry, Yaya began performing spoken word, where she developed a slick demeanor and performative bravado that would later manifest in her music in the form of her unique wordplay and alluring stage presence. Her early bouts with poetry would forge her into the talented writer and performer we see today. She says, “I feel like starting out with poetry, my poems were very wordy. When I started rapping, I had to find a flow and a cadence, and finding and strengthening that has allowed me to lock in on my sound, but I don't think I had that when I was [just] a poet. In learning how to rap, I had to learn how to say more, saying less.”
In learning how to develop the penmanship required to make a song like, “Dear Brown Girl” or “Fatn” off of Search of a Sound, Yaya also had to navigate the complex feelings that stirred within her due to her gritty upbringing. She is a Pisces who leads with her emotions and found that writing songs was the only way she could genuinely communicate her feelings with herself. What began as a means of finding herself eventually developed into a creative process guided by the realest parts of her, and that’s what she offers her listeners.
Yaya makes music for what she calls “the everyday girl.” These are the women like her who may find themselves out of college and caught between pursuing the “safe” career route, pursuing her creative endeavors, or somewhere in between. “I’m looking for the girls that look like me, Black and brown, from the projects, you hood but you not hood, there but you not there, with friends that can show you a world outside of what you’re from. I make music for girls like that.”
Her first project, Search of a Sound, released in 2022, is a rap and R&B fusion with themes on discovering perseverance through repurposing one’s pain, a burning desire for a love that’s anything but superficial, and the process of realizing one’s value despite a culture which convinces you otherwise. Everything, from Yaya’s team of stylists, producers, managers, etc., to the themes in her art are for and by Black women, ensuring that as Yaya continues to grow in her womanhood, so too will the messages in her music.
In May 2024, Yaya will release her new album, titled Unapologetic, which she describes as “the grown woman version of Search of a Sound.” In the two years between this and her most recent album, she has found exactly what she was searching for in her earlier works. By working hand-to-hand with producers and having beats crafted specifically for her, she grew in her professionality while still sticking to her roots. “I'm really rapping here,” she told FOCUS, “there's stuff for the people that really like me rapping, I also get in my R&B vibes too.”
While we (I) patiently await this album’s release, Yaya will release a 9-track mixtape this February composed of the freestyles that helped build her core fanbase over the last 5 years. This project is a present to her loyal listeners, as they can expect to find their favorite freestyles that were previously only available on Instagram, alongside a few fresh ones. She hopes that this mixtape, alongside her latest singles “Outside,” “NYB,” and “Who’s That Girl,” will help her connect with her listeners who could benefit from what she puts out into the world.