Last year, the English powerhouse singer and songwriter was nominated for four Grammys. Now she’s returning with “Stand for Myself,” an album made on her own terms.
Calculus is hard. Parallel parking is hard. Meeting and working with people who don’t look like you — that’s a breeze. “It’s. Not. Hard,” the singer and songwriter Yola emphasized during a recent call, clapping her hands in between each word. “I literally came from another continent, and remedied it in six months. Even my
manager, from remotely in England, found writers of color for me.”
The music industry promised to face its inequities over the past year in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and decades of complaints that a business built on the creative powers of people of color hasn’t always empowered them. Yola, the 38-year-old country-soul musician who leapt to national attention with a host of nominations at the 2020 Grammys, said one solution is an obvious one.