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IolaMusic has always been hard to pin down in terms of genre, but that’s the way she likes it – and her new EP, My Wayis no different.
“I’ve been planning this 100 per cent for years,” the singer-songwriter, 41, said exclusively Us Weekly of her new project, which ended on Friday, January 17. “I’m not a minimalist, I’m a complete maximalist. So here I get the time back from that part of my life.”
“That part” refers to the years when she worked as a singer in the London music scene, contributing her powerful pipes to artists such as Massive Attack and Bugz in the Attic. When she later established a solo career, however, many US listeners (and critics) mistakenly believed that her main influence was Americana, thanks in part to the country feel of her first album, Walking Through Fire. The truth is that she has always dabbled in everything – and My Way allowing her to take advantage of the breaking and stumbling beat sounds she was exploring a decade ago before anyone knew her name.
“I was definitely boxed in, and it helped me sort things out, so I wouldn’t fight things too hard,” she explained. “You enter scenes even though you don’t necessarily fit into those scenes. … I had country associations and I definitely had people in the country scene who were riding for me. So my connections brought me into that space, but that wasn’t my roots at all, musically.”
Yola’s second full album, Stand up for Myselffelt true to her, but the Americana label stuck even as her audience expanded.
“This has all been this process of edging closer to being able to tell my story and my narrative of what my exposure to music was and is,” he told Us. “When I was a published author and I would write for people who would be in the vernacular kind of space, I definitely had projects that were in that kind of space. But the most successful ones were closer to the space of the soul. My role was always a bit of an exchange of soul music, whether it was over dance music, whether it was in this broken beat scene, whether it was in jazz. My approach has always been closeness of soul, and so that has been my mission. I feel like I’ve started that Stand up for Myselfand maybe I’m taking it to its furthest point in this EP.”
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Fans who have seen Yola preview some of her new songs at live shows over the past year know that My Way doesn’t sound quite like anything she’s released before. “Future Enemies” begins with a pounding electronic beat before building to a soaring, arena-ready chorus, while “Ready” is directly inspired by the fractured beat scene that Yola emerged from during her years in the UK.
However, if those fans were paying close attention, they might have guessed where she was headed, as she has been sprinkling soul covers throughout her sets. “I have told you exactly the plan!” she quipped.
Yola’s recovery extended from his narrative to the My Way cover art, which shows her wearing a crown and lying between two extremely muscular (and shirtless) men.
“I was talking to people about photo shoots I had done that were so ashy. … I was like, ‘Why are we lighting me up like this?’” she recalled. “And so I made this folder in Pinterest, which is how to light me and how not to light me. I put all the bad, ashy-ass pictures of me in one and then the handful of juicy, lovely pictures in the other – and there was too much in one and not enough in the other. “
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The concept was inspired by her Ghanaian and Bajan heritage as well as her own skin tone, which she says was lightened after she moved from dark London to relatively sunny Tennessee and later New York City.
“I was really like, ‘I really need to be in my equatorial bag.’ I really need to be putting moist, putting melanated, putting African, putting Caribbean, putting in my bloodlines, putting where my body wants to be,” she said. “When you see that picture, you’re like, ‘Black people had to be a part of this,’ because this feels different. It feels equatorial, it feels conceived in a way that can understand and see my beauty without trying to bleach it, without freaking trying to burn it out with freaking highlighter to make my skin tone look lighter, not wanting to touch my nose straighter again. .”
The result is an image that is instantly iconic, fitting for a woman who made her Broadway debut last year as Persephone in Hadestown a an embodied rock pioneer Sister Rosetta Tharpe on the big screen in 2022 Elvis.
“I’m the main character. I am being served,” Yola added. “The way I am loved is through service. I don’t serve that world, that expectation is most people’s expectations of me. I put a stake through that vampire’s heart and he dies. Everything in making this record flew in the face of all the things the world expects from someone who looks like me.”
Yola’s My Way EP is out now. His Sovereign Soul tour kicks off in Denver on May 10. Ticket sales will begin on Friday, January 24, with fan presale on. Details will be available here.
