Next Wave: Yung Yana 

A poet, chef, singer-songwriter, and community builder, Yung Yana doesn’t fit neatly into any box. 

“I live a life of duality in the gifts God has given me,” she says. “Limiting your light can be suffocating. I cannot and will not pick one thing to be.”

Raised on poetry and refined by over a decade as a professional chef, Yana’s gifts converge through her musical and culinary experiences. The most notable being her event series Insatiable Table., which we had the privilege of experiencing. The experience blends her love for art and food with a unique and unmatched vibe you have to witness for yourself.

 “I highlight local artists each month and craft a multi-course tasting menu inspired by their sound,” she explains. 

Each plate becomes a poem, a beat, a mood. It’s sensory storytelling that’s as healing as it is inventive. Yana believes her art lives at the intersections. 

“Where a meal meets a melody, where a plate becomes a moodboard,” she tells us. “And where storytelling happens through every sense. My journey has shifted from doing one thing well to building worlds where all my passions can live and breathe together. 

Yung Yana’s music, which she loosely labels Alternative R&B, offers a soundscape inspired by the likes of Lianne La Havas, Amel Larrieux, Moses Sumney, and Solange. She also paid homage to some of her indie artists peers like Anna Field, Sista Salem, Tafari Malik, and Blk Pool. Yana shared that these are “just a small fraction” of the humans who make her better as an artist. 

“I adopt the philosophy that if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. All of these artists are the blueprint for me,” she adds, saying their influence has even extended to the way she cooks. 

But her artistry is rooted in something even deeper: survival. 

“My artistry is how I survive,” she says candidly. “It’s how I alchemize the parts of myself that feel too heavy to hold.”

Her debut EP Cacophony dives headfirst into the trenches of mental health, confronting suicidal ideation and depression with raw honesty. One of her most streamed songs, “To Whom It May Concern,” originated in that darkness. 

“Fun fact, I can’t do a live performance without singing that song first. It grounds me,” she shares. Recently, she rewrote the lyrics, choosing to “speak life into life.” Yana’s voice is timeless, reminiscent of classic blues singers who sang their pain and belted out their passions with certainty amid uncertain times. 

As we continue to explore Mental Health Awareness Month, we asked how the songstress cares for her mental health while balancing all of her gifts. For Yung Yana, healing is a layered process—rooted in therapy, journaling, and friendship—but also in creating spaces where people can feel seen. 

“I’ve turned my pain into something beautiful and something that resonates,” Yana vulnerably offers. 

She goes onto share how she continues to create space for others to connect and transmute. 

“Blackness is not a monolith—it’s a multiverse,” she says. “Through my work as a chef, my music, and the ways I combine them, I’m building spaces for people to meet and heal.”

Yana is truly something special that can’t be encapsulated in text. Her warm voice and comforting plates have a unique place in the hearts of many. Yana calls her superpowers her geniuses. 

“What truly makes my artistry magical is my ability to turn sound into taste,” she said. “I can hear an artist like Sista Salem, whose rich, soulful tone reaches into your spirit and holds it, and turn that into a brown butter coconut bisque with sage oil.”

From Atlanta’s creative underground to the communal energy of Insatiable Table, Yung Yana is shaping the culture by nourishing the spirit—one song, one plate, and one brave truth at a time.

Be sure to follow her journey here.