Hi, everyone. Streetthony Signtano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this Amaarae record, Black Star.

Here is a brand new LP from American and Ghanaian singer and songwriter Amaarae. An artist I caught on to through her 2023 Fountain Baby record, which was one of my favorite albums of that year. There was just so much about the music on that project that, in my opinion, made it special. It's catchy, fantastical songs, Amaarae's light, high-pitched, otherworldly vocals. The futuristic, trippy, spacious production, along with the unique combinations of modern Afro beats with Western dance pop and RnB. It was also an album that was so good the deluxe tracks on it were fire, and it did lead to some pretty great album-defining features on the latest Childish Gambino record, too.

But yeah, all of this culminated into Amaarae becoming one of the most new exciting artists out there right now, in my opinion, and someone who had this great potential to be a bridge between all these different worlds of music. I don't know, on some level, I anticipated that Amaarae would essentially just give us more of the same or dig deeper into the sound and the style that she set on Fountain Baby with her next eventual album.

But being the unpredictable creative that she is, apparently she had much different plans.

Now, I probably don't need to say this, but the pop music scene at the moment is undergoing a bit of a dance-dance revolution, with so many artists out there right now favoring production that evokes the vibe of a warehouse rave or brings big house influences, Y2K dance aesthetics. This trend, apparently, has tempted even Amaarae here, but she's definitely putting her own spin on it, I would say, even if it does sound like she's leaning a bit less into the Afro beat influences that made Fountain Baby the record that it was.

I mean, if anything, the true shock on Black Star is just how much the songwriting and production aesthetics have changed since the last album, right from the opening track, which features a beat that pretty much sounds like some blown out, Brazilian funk with super loud vocals, big, big, massive bass, and some industrially tinged effects and synthesizers. Some braggadocious verses as well from Amaarae that sound like something out of Kanye's Yeezus era. And while I wouldn't say this thing is necessarily her strong suit, she does do a good job of capturing this vibe very accurately.

However, if there is something disappointing about seeing Amaarae go in this direction, it's how half baked a lot of the progressions on these tracks, and songwriting generally feels on occasion. Like, for example, many of the "ketamine coke and Molly" refrains throughout "Starkiller", or even the abrupt ending on "Ms60", which is swallowed up by this sudden spoken word passage from Naomi Campbell, when it feels like the track actually could have gone on a lot longer, especially given that this is a dance music album. If the track is going to be this short and we're just going to be capturing grooves and vibes, could we not just segue into the next moment or something?

So yeah, while I do think there is an essence and an aesthetic to this record, I also want to note that throughout this album, in comparison with Fountain Baby, it feels like the lyrics are a lot more one-dimensional this time, too. I'm not just simply talking about a lot of the choruses being very repetitive and containing very few words. I really do mean the storytelling and the imagery told throughout the album. It seems like it was all singular entirely inspired by a wild night out, fueled by drugs, and at some point, Amaarae seems to just become utterly obsessed with some woman. Again, maybe at a rave or something like that.

But yeah, the lyrics for the entirety of this record are rarely veer outside of these themes. The only tracks that really managed to stun me were the ones that sounded like they had some serious single power outside of the context of the tracklist without feeling too underdeveloped, or like they were cut off too abrupt, or would have just been respectable songs regardless of how you presented them, wrapped them in dance music production or something else.

Of course, I'm talking about tracks such as "Kiss Me Through the Phone pt 2" featuring PinkPantheress. I feel much the same way about "B2B". And going deeper into the record, we get a few more bops like "Fine Shit", which to me is like the ultimate expression of Y2K dance aesthetics with the album's overarching themes of desire coming together into something that is punchy, that is glossy, that is intoxicating. And then there's also "S.M.O.", which was a great single too, and features a perfect balance of rave aesthetics, some of those West African rhythmic touches ,as well as dance pop structures.

If more cuts on this album had managed more of a balance of all of these elements, along with just better song progressions across the run time, I think we'd be talking about a different album here. Because these tracks are also shoulder to shoulder with songs on this album that feature some pretty weak ideas, ideas that could have been retooled, like "Dove Cameron", whose autotuned flows and senselessly booming beats go nowhere fast. No matter how many times I tried, I'm sorry. I just could not get myself to warm up to "She is My Drug", which is essentially a track that features an interpolation of Cher's "Believe" ("Do you believe in love after drugs?") Yeah, that's not quite working for me.

With the final leg of the record, the only song that really stood out to me was "Free the Youth", which while, yes, it does have one of the bolder beats on the entire LP, I feel like this is just pretty inconsequential as a closer, as it doesn't really bring a message or a musical finale that ends the entire album off with a memorable bang. But once again, it feels like the production is carrying Amaarae as well, as her vocals are just nowhere near as interesting as they are on some of the best songs earlier on this record or even the best highlights on Fountain Baby.

The verses as well at this point on the album also read like just another nondescript picture of needing to get out to party and just be high out of your mind, which again, in general, there's nothing wrong with writing music about that. The problem is I feel like Amaarae really stalls those themes out much earlier on the album, which is why I have to say I'm feeling about a strong 5 to a light 6 on this record.

Anthony Fantano, Amaarae, Forever.