Yaya Bey details seventh album, Fidelity

Fidelity follows Bey's 2025 album do it afraid as a companion piece and marks a shift from her previous work. After the release of the record, she became aware that she'd been suppressing grief after the death of her father, Grand Daddy I.U. of Juice Crew, the loss of her home, and sensing a shift in the community centred around the Black American experience, leaving her in a space of emotional depletion. Fidelity builds upon three points of grief — death of the personal, communal, and innocence — with "Blue" offering the first point of insight into Bey processing those losses.

Rather than placing an explicit focus on grief, "Blue" introduces the album with joy, affirming Black experience, faithfulness, love, creativity, and community, offering a foundation of reassurance for Fidelity to stand on.

Discussing the track, she explains: “Blue” is the first song I wrote for the album. I wrote it when I was rock bottom coming off the heels of do it afraid. When I realized I had to make a big shift mentally and emotionally or I was gonna drown. The production is really reminiscent of early 2000's Pop/R&B like something red-haired Kelly Rowland would sing over on one of her solo projects. The nostalgia drew me to it. Almost like I'm coaching my younger self through something. Which I guess ultimately I am.”

Fidelity was written around these realisations last summer, and serves as the result of Bey reflections on what it means to be a Black artist and grief as a commodity, as she addresses the late recognition that Black musicians receive after death, the displacement taking place in her home of Queens and overall fracture of the Black diaspora, and the media shift into exploitation and disposal of black artists. “There was no place for that grief to exist that would not become a spectacle. I had been holding it in. Maybe, to protect myself. Maybe to prove the onlookers wrong. Whatever the case, it was spilling over now," Bey explains.

Fidelity artwork

Fidelity tracklist

"Me and Mine"
"The Towns (bella noche pt. 2)"
"The Great Migration"
"Forty Days"
"Higher"
"Dream Girl (Lexapro Mix)"
"Freeze Flight Fawn"
"Slot Machines"
"Simp Daddy Line Dance"
"As the Ocean"
"Blue"
"Cup Of Water"
"In The Middle"
"Egyptian Musk (ft. NESTA)"
"The Breakdown"
"Who Are You"