Despite the acclaim that met her third studio album, 2025’s do it afraid, Yaya Bey found herself sobbing in a hotel room the week of its release, all the grief she’d held inside finally spilling out. The Queens-born musician had been mourning the loss of her father (the Juice Crew MC Grand Daddy I.U.), but also something broader—the erosion of a certain Black American way of life. Bey quickly returned to the studio to record the songs that would become Fidelity, a companion piece to do it afraid and the result of a summer of reflection and renewal. On Fidelity, Bey grapples with what she calls the “three deaths”: the personal, the communal and the loss of innocence. Over the disco funk of “Forty Days”, she explores the belief that it takes that long for a loved one to pass into the ancestral realm after they die, asking her father to “shine your light down on me”. On “Slot Machines”, she critiques the rise of individualism over community solidarity. And on “The Towns (bella noche pt. 2)”, she repeats the refrain of last year’s “bella noches pt. 1”: “The rent is too high/The wages too low/Homegirls can’t drop it low to the floor.” (The title is a nod to a viral news clip filmed outside a since-closed nightclub in Baton Rouge.) Here and there, Bey retools do it afraid highlights to better reflect the present: “Dream Girl (Lexapro Mix)” is a slow, sultry reality check of last year’s synth-pop fantasy “dream girl”. Through it all, she finds the joy in heartache and change, as on lead single “Blue”, a soul song written at rock bottom. Nevertheless, she meets her emotions head-on, singing: “You can’t run from nothing that’s yours to feel/From nothing that’s yours to heal.”