Yola's got a new EP called My Way out today, and the title track apparently describes a fraught dynamic with her previous label, Easy Eye Sound, and its owner, Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys.
In a new interview with Rolling Stone, the British soul singer (who digs into '80s pop/R&B on My Way) describes her fight for creative control when making 2021's Stand For Myself, which Auerbach produced. "It’s cookie-cutter bullshit, is all it is," she said of Easy Eye's business model with in-house songwriters and musicians. "It’s what they did in the old days: People have no agency. That was something that was celebrated, so I can see how people hold that up as a way to operate. But it’s also a waste of my skill."
"I like a diss track," Yola also said of "My Way," adding:
This song is about when you’re trapped and you can’t just evaporate because you have to be in this space. It’s about the levels of which I had to go through, mind gaming, after someone tried to mind game me. This song is really about how I really tried with someone: “I’m interested in you as a person and how you operate. Let’s be collaborative. But you just can’t seem to not want to invoke the mammy paradigm, which is the plus-size Black woman who serves you at the sacrificing of herself.”
Yola is currently signed to S-Curve Records. Read her full interview here and stream My Way below.
