Amaarae Has All The Makings of a Pop Star: Her Debut Album Put Her on The Map
Her sultry vocals aren't her only gift, Amaarae has a peculiar sense of fashion and an unquenchable desire to express herself in odd yet exciting ways. She is set to become a global pop star.
I’m overjoyed to be working on this newsletter. Why? I’ve had it in mind for some time to write about Amaarae, the singer, songwriter, record producer, and sound engineer. I’m absolutely impressed by her career (so far) and it’s an honour to introduce you guys to her craft if you don’t already know her. And if you know her, then I guess you’re as excited as I am to embark on this journey.
Amaarae is currently having the best time of her life. And deservedly so. How did she get here? Born in New York, and raised between the contrasting worlds of Atlanta and Accra, she found herself gravitating towards music at a tender age. As such, she wrote her first song when she was 13, a remake of R.Kelly and Usher’s Same Girl. It started her down a path of creative pursuit, one where she started paying attention to various forms of visual content, particularly music videos.
Self-expression, that’s what characterizes Amaarae’s artistry. It is (and has been) the unbridled force driving her passion for music. Mostly so because Amaarae has never been one to conform and is always looking for unprecedented ways to self-express. During her childhood days, in the hip-hop dominated world of Atlanta and the Bronx, she developed an affinity for breaking norms after watching the music video of Kelis’ Young, Fresh ‘n’ New. She thought to herself, there are a million ways to express yourself without following the rules of convention.
Where did this lead the young and free-spirited Amaarae? While she was in high school, she started assembling mixtapes. Having been influenced by the musical interests of her parents and family members during her formative years, Amaarae, whose real name is Ama Serwa Gerfi, grew up to become a teenager with a sense of multifariousness. At the age of 17, she took up a job as an intern at a music studio, learning the ropes of music production and recording engineering. Studying English Literature at the university, Amaarae found a way to balance her school work and her personal interests, practising a lot on her songwriting and training her vocals.
She would return to Ghana in 2017, fuelled with energy to launch a music career on the shores of her native home. What was the creative scene looking like around this time in the country? There was a new wave of young independent artists dabbling in various genres such as RnB, Neo-soul, Hip-hop, EDM. It didn’t take long before Amaarae joined the crop of new acts, stumping unwaveringly in her unique approach to her craft.
Amaarae released her debut EP Passionfruit Summers under her independent record label, Golden Child LLC, in November 2017, a six-track project that touched on the throes of heartbreak as well as the bliss of newfound love. The EP was tightly held by electronic production, Amaarae’s luscious vocals, and sublime melodies. On tracks like Catching a wav and Fluid, she shined through with unrelenting confidence, relishing in past memories and sometimes losing herself in them. Fusing elements of pop, RnB, and other genres, Amaarae struck a balance with her inimitable songwriting and audacious lyrics.
On the production aspect of the project, names like Dex Kwasi and MikeMillzOnEm were major contributors. Amaarae herself co-produced some of the instrumentals. Shortly after the release of Passionfruit Summers, Fluid picked up momentum and became the standout track on the tape. The creeping success of the song was amplified by stimulating visuals.
That same year, the gender-bending singer collaborated with emerging acts in the African alternative scene including Yaw P and AYLØ. In 2018, however, Amaarae had begun to enjoy more recognition. First, locally, within Accra, and then gradually her music slunk into the hub of Afropop, Lagos. More recognition meant that she would get named as one of Apple Music Africa’s Favourite New Artists in April 2018.
Her biggest moment in the African pop spotlight at that point came when she was featured on Santi’s Rapid Fire alongside South African rapper Shane Eagle. Her vocals were like glass and your listening experience was magnified by the fragility of its nature. The song brought a lot of awareness for her such that she went on a media tour in Lagos, further cementing her place in the Alté scene. Towards the end of the year, together with the likes of Teni Entertainer and BOJ DRB, Amaarae performed at ART X Lagos which took place at The Civic Centre, Victoria Island.
2019 was a good year for African music, especially West African music. When the first Boiler Room event took place in Accra, Amaarae was among the selected performing acts which included Darkovibes, La Meme Gang, and Kwesi Arthur. As she spread the gospel of her music through live shows and media runs, she continued to interpolate Western sounds in her music. When Amaarae linked up with Wande Coal for a collaboration, the song turned out to be an Afro-disco influenced sound, with Amaarae’s shadowy vocals gliding over soft piano chords and mild African percussion - the instrumental was produced by ØBED and Rvdical The Kid. Wande Coal on this track? Ethereal. My soul rightfully belongs to that man.
Like it’s typical of Amaarae’s visuals, the music video for Spend Some Time contained elements of idiosyncratic expressions, characterized by scenes of women living their lives to the fullest. She was seemingly inspired by disco divas of the 70s such as Diane Ross and Donna Summer.
Later that year, around September, Amaarae dropped a new single titled Like It. The song was heavily inspired by dancehall rhythms and the singer flowed effusively, approaching the instrumental with RnB leanings. With soothing vocals and grandiose lyrics, Amaarae found herself teetering on the edge of pop without straying far from her alternative background.
How did Amaarae drive home the message that the song was intended to pass across? She gave an apt visual representation of the song with its music video, where she turned up at a venue that had different enticing activities happening simultaneously - with a unifying theme of human’s irrepressible desires and the relentless need to chase those desires, regardless of where they lead you.
The greatest thing that Amaarae has done for her craft, looking at it from where I stand, was to never fit herself in a box. She varies in the music that set the foundation for her blossoming career and has continually experimented with disparate genres, which mostly results in immersive Afro-fusion tracks. Her career is greatly defined by her perfectionist traits, and so she never rushes her process, taking time to carefully curate the components that make up her songs.
In 2020, the Nigerian music soundscape largely evolved, and we saw the likes of Omah Lay and Tems redefining what popular music meant. Meanwhile, Amaarae unceasingly showed up on her Instagram live to connect with her fans, answering all questions thrown at her, and giving her fans a peek into her creative process. All this while, the Ghanaian singer teased them with new music. One of her (first) major offerings of the year came when Odunsi released his EP Everything You Heard is True and Amaarae was one of the distinct voices on the track Body Count which featured Gigi Atlantis and Deto Black.
She released her first single of 2020 in July, following it up with a tweet that the single Leave Me Alone was basically for young people to vibe to amidst the anguish of social distancing. She used the song to demonstrate the importance of self-isolation, which serves as a way to avoid the Coronavirus as well as human beings in general. Sonically, the song was bolstered by resonant highlife guitar riffs and Amaarae managed to vitalise the instrumental with her moony vocals and brazen lyrics, employing RnB and pop melodies.
A few months after the release of Leave Me Alone, Amaarae dropped a follow-up single titled Fancy. Fancy revealed the Southern hip-hop influence that carved Amaarae’s propensity for rap. She flowed on the beat (which was produced by KZ - a co-writer on the song) with her rap-singing style, assuming a femme fatale role and offering tempting activities like going on a ride and smoking marijuana.
Just as news of her upcoming debut album flooded the media, Amaarae put out a music video for Fancy. The crisp visuals lent itself to the message of the song, displaying a hedonistic lifestyle. It brought more attention to the song. Pitchfork named the song as one of its Top 100 songs of 2020 alongside Burna Boy’s Onyeka and Koffee’s Lockdown.
Amaarae released her debut studio album The Angel You Don’t Know (TAYDK) in November 2020, a fourteen-track project that pulled the listener in from the intro and catapulted them into a reverie. With this album, Amaarae demolished all boundaries, obscuring the latticework of established genres, and reforming them into a palette of psychotropic sounds.
Where does the album name come from? Amaarae stated that her dad had a saying which goes “Better the devil you know than the angel you don’t know.” The androgynous act also claimed that the album was for the bad bitches. According to her, she was worried about how people were going to receive the message in her music. So she was at first deliberating what the album should constitute. But she eventually concluded that it didn’t matter. What mattered was her enjoying the process as well as listeners enjoying the music.
Amaarae started working on the album in 2019, trying out different ideas within the confines of her home before she joined a writing camp where the likes of KZ, Maesu, and Rvdical The Kid - a longtime writing partner and collaborator - showed up. The album featured heavyweights like Santi (who practically gave her a verse as payback for what she did on Rapid Fire), Odunsi, Moliy (whose sister came up with the hook for Feel A Way), Ckay, and more.
The album’s underlying themes were things that Amaarae had always clamoured about: confidence, debauchery, freedom from convention. The most noticeable thing about the album was how much her soundscape has expanded, allowing her more opportunity for experimentation. She conveniently altered indie pop, dancehall, neo-soul, rnB, and Afropop into a cohesive body of work, dominating her terrain while taking the listener along with her.
For the production, a lot of names deserve praise. The likes of Yinka Bernie, Kuvie, Jesse Alordiah, John Wav, Rvdical The Kid, and so many others. The album’s production was predominantly defined by (the tempo of) 80’s/90’s pop. The album received several commendations from listeners and critics alike. Even Pitchfork gave it a nod, describing the album by saying;
“In lesser hands, The Angel You Don’t Know’s wide embrace of genre could feel like a mash-up, or a crafty amalgam of trending styles. Yet with her distinctive arid singing voice and close work with producers like KZ and Rvdical the Kid, Amaarae’s freewheeling confidence and singular point of view allows her to swoop through sounds, light as air.”
As we know it, 2021 proved difficult and unreasonable for so many of us, and for anyone who experienced otherwise, you should count yourself lucky. One thing we can collectively agree on is that Afropop (and African music in general) has been on an ascent. We have seen the likes of Wizkid, Ckay, Burna Boy, Tems, and more record major successes. Likewise Amaarae, whose song Sad Girlz Luv Money remix featuring American singer Kali Uchis and American-based Ghanaian singer Moliy penetrated the global mainstream, peaking at #1 on the global Spotify Viral chart, #1 on TikTok U.S. Top Tracks chart, and #1 on the Shazam US chart. The song blew up massively on Tiktok, with over 2 million videos using it.
The biggest record the song set was its entry into the Billboard top 100. I can’t seem to find any updated article on the number the song peaked at, but it debuted at number 80. I’m looking forward to the next set of moves from Amaarae as well as what she would evolve into in the nearest future, both in her music and her image. She is a natural-born pop star.
Heyyyy guys. So I have to apologize that this newsletter is coming late. I have been somewhat busy with events as I’ve been trying to gain more ground in event planning and organization. The interesting thing about this is that it’s for the purpose of learning as well as to have more understanding of the entertainment industry. This would mean that I get to have more experiences to share with you.
Last week, I was part of a team that organized a concert (The Live in Concert) and it was fascinating to watch live performances from Fireboy, Wande Coal, Victony, Lojay, Wurld, and a few others. Really, nothing beats live music. It’s an unadulterated form of art. Anyway, I hope you have a lovely weekend. I’ve been listening to Ruger’s The Second Wave a whole lot. How about you, what are you currently listening to?
Amazing Write up🙌