Every artist’s journey has an arc. For Amaarae, the first two chapters were a kinetic story of ascent. Her 2020 debut, The Angel You Don’t Know, was the sound of the hustle, of an artist fantasizing about the Bentley she would one day buy for her mom. Its follow-up, Fountain Baby, was the explosive arrival on the global stage, a kaleidoscopic expansion of her sound. Now, with Black Star, we enter the third act: the afterparty. This is the sound of an artist who has the keys to the suite with the best view, the best drugs, and the most beautiful lovers, only to be left with the haunting, definitive question of superstardom: Is this all there is?
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To answer that question, Amaarae embarked on a global pilgrimage of sound. Following the success of Fountain Baby, she immersed herself in the nightlife of Miami, Los Angeles, and São Paulo, studying the foundations of Chicago house and Detroit ghettotech while simultaneously diving deeper into the regional microgenres of her native Ghana. The result is Black Star, an album that is not beholden to any one location but instead carves out its own sovereign territory on the dancefloor. It is a sonic nation-state of the Black diaspora, a place that collaborator Bree Runway aptly dubs “CzechSlovakAtlanta.”
This new world is built with a radically populist and almost criminal approach to pop history. Amaarae treats the canon of club music like her personal library, pulling references with the confidence of a master thief. On the skeletal, Pitbull-esque banger “Fineshyt,” she masterfully weaves in foundational house tracks. She positions the PinkPantheress duet “Kiss Me Thru the Phone pt 2” as a spiritual sequel to Soulja Boy by cheekily sampling Sisqó’s “The Thong Song.” Elsewhere, she interpolates Kelis’s “Milkshake” and, most audaciously, ponders her faith in “love off the drugs” to the unmistakable tune of Cher’s “Believe.” For Amaarae, the finest hooks are treasures to be plundered and repurposed for her own hedonistic universe.
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But for every ecstatic peak on Black Star, there is a hollowed-out comedown. The album is a masterclass in tension and restraint, a departure from the splashy bombast of her previous work. The deep house of “B2B” doesn’t build to a euphoric drop; it abruptly dissolves into the quiet melancholy of a Spanish guitar. The breakdowns on tracks like “Stuck Up” and “100DRUM” feel like fleeting highs, just enough to keep you on your feet until the next bump, but never quite reaching a true catharsis. It is a brilliant musical reflection of the album’s lyrical themes: the endless, exhausting pursuit of a high that remains just out of reach.
This sense of a guarded, almost nihilistic luxury makes Black Star the sonic equivalent of what Future achieved on Dirty Sprite 2—a beautifully constructed, exquisitely appointed cage. The windows offer a panoramic view of the party, but there are no doors to the outside world. Pursued by hangovers and hangers-on, Amaarae has never sounded so thrillingly detached. “This bitch likes me/And I like this bitch for now,” she jeers on the opener “Stuck Up.” Yet, moments of shocking sincerity manage to crack the album’s lacquered surface, like when the legendary Charlie Wilson’s buttery vocals cut through the orchestral haze of “Dream Scenario,” feeling like the first rays of sun after a long, dark night. It is in these moments we see the fleshy, beating heart at the center of the machine. Amaarae is an auteur in complete control, and with Black Star, she is showing us everything: the glamour, the grind, the ecstasy, and the profound emptiness that comes with finally getting it all.
