Latest news with #Amaarae
Hypebeast
9 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Hypebeast
Amaarae Ascends on Boundless 'BLACK STAR'
Summary Amaarae's star has been one to watch for a while now, initially inviting an influx of eyes with breakout single 'Fluid' in 2017. Almost ten years later, the Ghanaian-American's artistry is still guided by her fluidity – in genre, gender, style, and sonic composition – possibly more now than ever before, shining through her third studio album,BLACK STAR. Across the enamouring 13-track album, Amaarae takes the sounds of her Ghanaian upbringing global, amalgamating amapiano and Afrobeats, among other local subgenres – ghettotech, house, techno, and baile funk included. Her internet era come-up is also strung throughout the album, hypnotic synths and dreamy dance breaks hitting right when needed. In Amaarae's own words, the diaspora-transcending LP is an ode to the alternative youth of Ghana. 'This era is about vindication—for myself and my community,' she asserts. As for the project's contributors,PinkPantheresshops on highlight 'Kiss Me Thru The Phone pt. 2,' withNaomi Campbellon 'ms60,' bothBree Runwayand Starkillers on 'Starkilla,'Zacarion '100DRUM,' andCharlie Wilsonon 'Dream Scenario.' 1. Stuck Up2. Starkilla ft. Bree Runway & Starkillers3. ms60 ft. Naomi Campbell4. Kiss Me Thru The Phone pt. 2 ft. PinkPantheress5. B2B6. She Is My Drug7. Girlie-Pop!8. S.M.O.9. Fineshyt10. Dove Cameron11. Dream Scenario ft. Charlie Wilson12. 100DRUM ft. Zacari13. Free The Youth Infused with the influence of her elders,BLACK STARblurs a myriad of local sounds and revamps them for the internet age – turning up the reverb, leaning into AutoTune, somehow maintaining a finger on the pulse to anticipate just what unexpected sonic union we don't even know we're seeking out. If the future of Afropop is in Amaarae's hands, we're doingmorethan just fine. StreamBLACK STAR– out everywhere now.
New York Times
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Amaarae Blends Desire With Ambition, and 8 More New Songs
Every Friday, pop critics for The New York Times weigh in on the week's most notable new tracks. Listen to the Playlist on Spotify here (or find our profile: nytimes) and at Apple Music here, and sign up for The Amplifier, a weekly guide to new and old songs. Amaarae, 'Girlie-Pop!' The Ghanaian American songwriter Amaarae trades in rhythm and lust. Her vocals are piping soprano tones, delivered close to the ear or microphone; her messages merge intimate come-ons with career aspirations. 'Flip positions, switching genres / till you make it pop,' she coos in 'Girlie-Pop!' from her new album, 'Black Star.' The production is breathy and personal with a few electric guitar notes one moment, then drum-driven and ambitious the next. It's an open, self-conscious commodification of intimacy. John Kongos, 'Nature's Game' John Kongos, 80, has had an extensive career as a songwriter and studio musician. His big moment in the spotlight came way back in 1971, with the thumping pop-psychedelic hit single 'He's Gonna Step on You Again.' (Happy Mondays reworked it in 1990 as 'Step On.') Now Kongos has re-emerged with 'Nature's Game,' a song he wrote in 1986 and recently completed, backed by his sons' band, Kongos. It's nearly as fuzz-toned, eccentric and bummed-out as his old hit, starting with a child asking, 'Is there no way out?' and going on to envision the moon and Nature causing humans to start holy wars: 'She likes her food to fight.' The loping beat mocks the bitterness. Anysia Kym & Tony Seltzer, 'Speedrun' 'Things fall apart baby, but I wouldn't have it any other way,' Anysia Kym sings in this very brief manifesto about independence and self-determination: 'You can't please everyone / Just do what you want of your own volition.' Tony Seltzer's production uses just a few elements — a short loop of ambiguous keyboard chords, a stop-and-start beat, a four-note bass line, drum-machine hi-hats, a man's voice calmly saying 'Now' — to make her sound like a voice of sanity amid the noise. Ashley Monroe, 'Amen Love' Ashley Monroe's new album, 'Tennessee Lightning,' works through knotty mixed feelings about romance and religion. In 'Amen Love,' she's 'looking for a touch so heavenly' and craving salvation from someone who will 'treat my body like your cathedral' and 'make a believer out of me.' The production rises from single plucked guitar notes to a storm of electric guitars and orchestral strings, but her prayer goes unfulfilled. Emily Yacina, 'Talk Me Down' While Emily Yacina gently sings, 'Peeking over ledges, talk me down,' layers of looped piano surround her in dizzying stereo motion. It's a song about insecurities — 'I wish I was more of a natural / I wanna open up,' she lilts — with a sound design showing why she holds back. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Amaarae Shares Video for New Song 'Girlie-Pop!': Watch
Amaarae, photo by Salomé Gomis-Trezise Amaarae has shared a new single from Black Star, the Fountain Baby follow-up arriving next month. 'Girlie-Pop!' comes with a sensual video directed by Omar Jones. Check it out below. In a press release, Amaarae said, ''Girlie-Pop!' started as a freestyle over an open guitar on a magical night in Brazil! I wanted to make a song that embodies the feeling of a kiss from your favorite person in the world. We all dream of finding that one person who sends us into the stars with just a smile and peck on the lips! The Black Star album is all about fun and fantasy! I want 'Girlie-Pop!' to be the soundtrack for when you sit and day dream about your crush.' Black Star arrives August 8, via Interscope, and also features the Ghanaian highlife–inspired single 'S.M.O.' Last year, Amaarae released a stopgap EP, Roses Are Red, Tears Are Blue — A Fountain Baby Extended Play. Originally Appeared on Pitchfork Solve the daily Crossword
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
10 New Albums You Should Listen to Now: Amaarae, Gunna, No Joy, and More
All products featured on Pitchfork are independently selected by Pitchfork editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, Condé Nast may earn an affiliate commission. Amaarae, photo by Jenna Marsh With so much good music being released all the time, it can be hard to determine what to listen to first. Every week, Pitchfork offers a run-down of significant new releases available on streaming services. This week's batch includes new albums from Amaarae, Gunna, No Joy, Ada Lea, Osees, Charley Crockett, Big Freedia, Anamanaguchi, Mechatok, and Field Medic. Subscribe to Pitchfork's New Music Friday newsletter to get our recommendations in your inbox every week. (All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our affiliate links, however, Pitchfork earns an affiliate commission.) Amaarae: Black Star [Interscope] Two years after Fountain Baby propelled her into the stratosphere, Amaarae burrows deep into the dance underground on follow-up Black Star. The Ghanaian American singer alternates between gruff monologues and featherlight twirls on songs like rap-forward opener 'Stuck Up,' presenting the club as a site of transgression and intimidation. Single and centerpiece 'Girlie-Pop!' interjects with a perpetually bursting bubble of pop that turns a plosive bombardment—'pop! pop! pop! pop! pop! pop! pop!'—into the sound of joy itself. Listen on Apple Music Listen on Spotify Listen on Tidal Listen on Amazon Music Gunna: The Last Wun [Young Stoner Life/300 Entertainment] Gunna's relationship with longtime label home Young Stoner Life Records has grown fraught since the Atlanta rapper agreed to take an Alford plea in the since-closed racketeering case against the Young Thug–led collective. His new album, The Last Wun, nevertheless arrives via the label, but Young Thug—a regular on Gunna projects until the musicians were indicted in 2022—is absent from the tracklist. Instead, Offset, and Afrobeats favorites Burna Boy, Asake, and Wizkid are the marquee guests of the One of Wun follow-up. Gunna shared two singles ahead of his album's release, 'Him All Along' and 'Won't Stop.' Listen on Apple Music Listen on Spotify Listen on Tidal Listen on Amazon Music No Joy: Bugland [Hand Drawn Dracula] Jasamine White-Gluz enlisted maximalist producer and vaporwave mystic Fire-Toolz for Bugland, her first No Joy album since 2020's Motherhood. If their union promises grand scale and anything-goes abandon, the results are at once more sweeping and more focused than you might expect. Fire-Toolz's hyperbaric production fills watertight songs with astral space that helps White-Gluz's guitars and vocals levitate, as disparate fragments of indie-pop melody, My Bloody Valentine spangle, and a few Paul Oakenfold action beats conspire in spectacular fashion. Listen on Apple Music Listen on Spotify Listen on Tidal Listen on Amazon Music Listen/Buy at Bandcamp Buy at Rough Trade Ada Lea: When I Paint My Masterpiece [Saddle Creek] Ada Lea follows 2021's One Hand on the Steering Wheel the Other Sewing a Garden with When I Paint My Masterpiece, an album 'of breezy, folk-indebted songs that marvel at everyday realities and find joy in humility,' as Marissa Lorusso says in her review. Lea worked on the 16-track record with producer Luke Temple. 'Much of the record was recorded in a single room with a small band, live and loose in rural Ontario,' Lorusso writes. 'That intimacy translates into some transcendent moments, as when a gently distorted guitar riff wonderfully steals the spotlight partway through 'Something in the Wind,' or in the masterful control of tension on 'Down Under the Van Horne Overpass.'' Listen on Apple Music Listen on Spotify Listen on Tidal Listen on Amazon Music Listen/Buy at Bandcamp Buy at Rough Trade Osees: Abomination Revealed at Last [Deathgod] On their whopping 29th album, Osees finally rope some of their garage-rock origins back into the ring after veering off toward synth-punk and heady psych-rock on Intercepted Message and Protean Threat. The new Abomination Revealed at Last charges out the gate with its double-drummer fury on 'Abomination' and rarely slows down. When it does, however, like on the standout 'Sneaker' or the post-punk groove of 'Glitter-Shot,' Osees don't lose any of their focus. If anything, Abomination Revealed at Last is a slight return to form without abandoning what the band has become in recent years. Listen on Apple Music Listen on Spotify Listen on Tidal Listen on Amazon Music Listen/Buy at Bandcamp Buy at Rough Trade Charley Crockett: Dollar a Day [Island] An antidote to the overproduced and polished side of Nashville's country output, Charley Crockett has the drive of old-school country stars with the modern charm to scoop up a Grammy nomination, too. For his latest LP and follow-up to Lonesome Drifter, Crockett reunited with producer Shooter Jennings to flesh out his ongoing Sagebrush Trilogy. The new album, Dollar a Day, lets the warmth of the sun's rays reflect off its slide guitar rambling in 'All Around Cowboy' and the earnest vocal harmonies of 'Crucified Son,' positioning Crockett's latest as an easygoing summer listen. Listen on Apple Music Listen on Spotify Listen on Tidal Listen on Amazon Music Buy at Rough Trade Big Freedia: Pressing Onward [Queen Diva Music] Bounce queen Big Freedia is staying true to her New Orleans roots by bringing her rousing spirit straight to the pews. Named after her local Baptist church, Pressing Onward fuses her high-energy bounce beats with gospel music to reignite her religious faith and desire to bring communities together. With refrains like, 'We don't need a preacher just to go to church,' and, 'Drive the enemy out/Shake that submarine, Big Freedia uses her album to spread party-starting messages of love, acceptance, and perseverance rather than exclude fans based on their faith. Listen on Apple Music Listen on Spotify Listen on Tidal Listen on Amazon Music Anamanaguchi: Anyway [Polyvinyl] Everything you know about Anamanaguchi has shifted on Anyway, their third album and follow-up to 2019's [USA]. The feel-good band turned from chiptune pop toward full-on fuzz rock, writing in a living room–turned–practice space and recording live to tape at Tarbox Road Studios, where Dave Fridmann produced the LP. Though Anamanaguchi's music has long summoned visions of late-night video game console parties and back-of-the-bus GameBoy sessions, the New York quartet now sounds closer to Ovlov or Angel Du$t playing a sweaty dive bar. Yet, as much as Anyway is a pivot, it's still got the heart of Anamanaguchi's longtime sound, as heard on singles 'Buckwild' or 'Rage (Kitchen Sink).' Listen on Apple Music Listen on Spotify Listen on Tidal Listen on Amazon Music Listen/Buy at Bandcamp Buy at Rough Trade Mechatok: Wide Awake [Young] Through his work with both Drain Gang and PC Music, Emir Timur Tokdemir has quietly set up camp at the vanguard of pop music. On Wide Awake, his first formal solo LP, the producer, better known as Mechatok, enlists Isabella Lovestory, Tohji, and—on the club-pop bunker buster 'Expression on Your Face'—Bladee and Ecco2k to showcase his moreish spin on bubblegum synth-pop. Listen on Apple Music Listen on Spotify Listen on Tidal Listen on Amazon Music Listen/Buy at Bandcamp Buy at Rough Trade Field Medic: Surrender Instead [self-released] Billed as a rebirth for Field Medic mastermind Kevin Patrick Sullivan, Surrender Instead is a refresh for the genre-hopping artist following years pursuing sobriety and regular therapy to separate himself from his art. On his ninth LP, he flits from bedroom pop with 'Simply Obsessed' to an acoustic confessional like 'Castle Peaks' in the search for a healthy balance of life versus work. As Sullivan puts it over alt-country twang with a sparkle of romance on 'Melancholy,' he's 'holdin' on while tornadoes tear apart the fabric of [his] mind.' At least he finds a way to make the ride sound scenic. Listen on Apple Music Listen on Spotify Listen on Tidal Listen on Amazon Music Listen/Buy at Bandcamp Buy at Rough Trade Originally Appeared on Pitchfork Solve the daily Crossword
Vogue
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Vogue
‘I Don't Know That I Can Be Placed in a Box': Amaarae on Her Thrilling New Album, Black Star
On her third studio album, Black Star, Amaarae wastes no time. From the start, she throws down the gauntlet, swirling her distinctive soprano vocals around Euro techno, baile funk, and Afrobeats like they're a playground. The second track, 'Starkilla' (featuring Bree Runway and Starkillers), is driven by a choppy, repetitive bass, as Amaarae sings about various class A and B drugs. On 'B2B,' a deep house track that's destined to be a club classic, she chants the lyrics, 'I've been into you, I like what we do, now come into me, see my point of view,' almost as though she's casting a spell—before transitioning into a haunting acoustic serenade. 'This time around, I was like, 'Let's have some fun,'' the Ghanaian-American says, sitting opposite me in a dimly lit corner of her label's office, wearing her signature black-on-black. The project started in Miami last winter, after she performed a show with her producers and engineers in tow. The music started flowing and, well: 'We were just having a good time!' Amaarae later decamped to Brazil, where she immersed herself in 'the culture and the people' before finally finishing the LP at her home in Los Angeles. 'Usually we'd be in a studio for weeks or months,' she says. '[This time] we built a studio in my crib and just did it.' Unlike her previous projects (she 'overthought things a lot' while making her smash-hit 2023 album Fountain Baby, she says), Black Star is an uninhibited record. It incorporates enigmatic affirmations with Bree Runway, a flirty appearance from PinkPantheress—and even a Naomi Campbell outro. 'I really wanted to make a statement about my capability as a musician and a creative,' Amaarae tells me now. 'To show people that I can do music in a higher art sense.'
