The past few years have been freeing for Yola. The genre-crossing British singer left Nashville, moved to the New York area (and started dating), and won her first role on Broadway (in Hadestown) and began the next phase of her musical career. Yolanda Quartey's time has now come my way (out today), The five-track mix of dance music and '80s pop R&B marks a gentle but firm departure from her previous two albums: more Janet Jackson than Dolly Parton.
The collection includes everything from carols to fuck songs to diss tracks to carnival celebrations. Its title speaks to Yola's belief that she was able to carve out greater autonomy for herself; she co-wrote and co-produced my way, Drawing on her years of experience as a behind-the-scenes producer. “An important part of this new era and this new art finally has a bargaining position,” she said. "Being in the right space, meeting enough people in the right space, and having the freedom to finally, 'Okay, I can now choose my environment and make it whatever I want.'" This new era is most exciting One of the things about it is that I'm able to be myself, and I'm not really completely free to be myself. "
her last album, 2021 represent myself, It's a different story, she says now. The record, produced by Dan Auerbach for his Easy Eye Sound label, represents yet another moment in a career filled with situations where Yola felt her creativity stifled, as if The full scope of her artistry—as a singer, arranger, producer, and instrumentalist—was marginalized. She tried hard to get her favorite musicians to record, tried to get the song "Dancing Away in Tears" released as a single (she lost), and tried to get herself more involved in the recording process, but with little success. This experience was one of several that influenced the title song my way: “You want control,” she sings, “but this is the pain.”
“It’s all cookie-cutter bullshit, that’s what it is,” she says of Easy Eye Sound’s old-school label model and its in-house songwriters and musicians. "That's what they used to do: people had no agency. That's something to celebrate, so I can see how people use that as a way to operate. But it's also a waste of my skills."
Yola recently walked rolling stones through five songs from her new EP.
"future enemy"
song: The pulsating dance rocker finds Yola free from the negative forces in her life.
Yola says: The first inspiration for it came from dating, those moments where you meet someone and you're like, "Oh no. I know how to be charming, I know how to charm people. But I noticed that in this charming moment, if you figure out who I am, you'll know I'm smitten. Not that we're getting along. "That's what happens when you're dating. Everyone you meet is not your person. I realized there were some people in my circle who were really terrible friends. It's like they don't care if you live or die. They say yes, but their actions don't show it.
If you're like me and very confident in your skills, some people might find this crazy threatening. The need to conquer or put you in a testing role becomes overwhelming. This started to show in my social life. I noticed that one of the core principles of Enemies of the Future is to avoid the opportunity to make enemies that are completely unnecessary. Regardless, you need to back off the hedge like Homer (Simpson) did. This really scares me. You just need to disappear.
This is one of the core principles of my life: other people dress me and carry me around their dream. It’s not just musical collaborators. It’s the people I do business with, it’s my friends, it’s every aspect of my life. People find something that works for me and say, "What am I going to get with this?" I To disappear from life, I would leave her in the dust. "
"temporary"
song: Yola leans into the high register, crooning this mid-tempo funk "ode to fuckboys" over the strutting bassline of "Divinity Roxx."
Yola says: I might be dating someone I like to call "sexy and scary." They're a smoke show, but they're a terrible person. Going on too many dates is really tiring. I don’t know if you’ve seen these streets, but they’re fucking ratchets. People try to prove that they're not a mess, so they go all out on their profile, and then they snap out of it and they're a confusion. Straight men don't really know how to take care of themselves at the best of times. Those things that happen often are hot and scary.
But you know what? They do serve a purpose. You can't date seriously all the time without getting burned out, so you need someone who isn't serious at all. This song is truly an ode to fuckboys. Part of their purpose is to trick you into believing you are that person. When you're exhausted, they step in and make sure you don't realize there's a real connection to your family. horny. It was probably the summer of 2023, in New York, and I was dating someone. Now that I think about it, this may have been inspired by a few people, a few boring cats. I did encounter a few of these cats on Long Island just after the pandemic. Fucking surf hotel. A few years later I got into a serious relationship and it took me back to that time.
"symphony"
song: This surging funk rocker captures the excitement and rush of love in a new relationship: "Play my heartstrings with your hands."
Yola says: I'm starting to feel like I'm getting closer to my people. There has never been one for me in England: I know it from my leap. The whole ethos and function was contrary to my existence. He will never go there. I got to Nashville and thought, “Probably not.” I didn’t have a date in Nashville. I worked there full-time for four years. Call the label "too long". I'm really disappointed in Nashville. My lifestyle was incompatible with the city. The infrastructure in Nashville looks really bad to me: radio stations, media, venues. That's why I stayed so long. But the make-up and culture of the city, if you will, don't quite match up. maybe i am also Far from home. Even for people from different backgrounds, eyewitness-centered assumptions are the definition of normalcy.
That's not the case in New York at all. There are a lot of white-centric people in England. But that was the opposite of what I was looking for when I came to America. I want to find places that are concentrated in a more diverse way. Not only are there different faces, but they're all centered the same way, but they're centered differently. That's more interesting to me.
So when I started living between New York and Nashville, I started dating seriously like it was a full-time job: five days a week. I made a schedule. I was serious. I used several apps, mostly ones centered around dating black men. I've been to England. I grew up in a village. I was literally inundated with white people. I'm not a sexual racist. I go to great lengths to make sure my va-jay-jay is unbiased. Some people are. When "Symphony" started happening, I started noticing that even though it wasn't the guy (who I was dating), there were things about me that were really positive. What these people are demonstrating is truly positive. This helped me gradually find my people, and then I found my people. But I wrote this song before I found my person.
"my way"
song: Yola delivers her best Michael Jackson impression in this passionate and anthemic kiss to her suffocating foe.
Yola says: I like diss tracks. This song is about when you're trapped and you can't evaporate because you have to be in this space. This is about the levels I had to go through after someone tried to play mind games on me. The song is actually about how I was really trying with someone: "I'm interested in you as a person and the way you carry yourself. Let's collaborate. But you can't seem to not invoke the mom paradigm, which is plus-size black men Women sacrifice themselves to serve you.”
And it's not just one person. This is the type I can find all the time. But in this particular case, the saying "you'll get what you want" is because you're either stronger than me. People who can play power games on you are rich people, old people, white people, white ladies playing the victim, skinny guys playing the victim. People don’t realize that being anti-fat is anti-Black. I think fatphobia is an intersection that people disrespect, but it exists in every culture, just like colorism. Although "my way" is related to work, it is also reflected in personal space. “My way” is the deviation of other people’s narratives from mine. “My way” equaled agency, and for the first time at age 40, I was able to have a say in my own life.
"Ready"
song: Howard Artis' pounding drums provide the heartbeat of this energetic funk-pop that has multiple layers of meaning, but on the surface it's a party-friendly, beautiful ode to life right now.
Yola says: If I played you “Ready” and I said, “An Afro-Caribbean person worked on this song,” you wouldn’t be terribly surprised. That's the point. This is about (passenger ship HMT Empire) blast, This is from an Afro-Caribbean British perspective. The lens it conveys through sound is a lot of what was important to me growing up in Britain, as well as Caribbean and African influences. You can hear MJ's influence. Definitely Lionel Richie. That's Gloria Estefan.
This should be a song that would cause a stir at the carnival. As a black British man, this is one of the most important parts of staying sane: you'll walk down the street and someone will have a machete and a green coconut stand, and they'll cut off the coconut, open the pulp on top, pour a little alcohol in and make a glass Pina Colada. On the other side of the street will be a rotisserie chicken bucket. You're walking up to whatever sound system you want and you feel like you're having some communion with Caribbean life that you've been missing. This song should evoke that feeling of celebration.