Amaarae – Black Star

After 2023’s spectacular Fountain Baby, expectations are high for Amaarae’s follow-up. Black Star is lithe and nocturnal, all sex and drugs over throbbing, rubbery bass, her voice as skittish and ever-changing as before. It’s strange then that in its opening stages it feels so lifeless. All the ingredients are there, but on tracks like Starkilla and ms60 they never feel animated with any of her usual sense of mischievous mishmash. It makes you realise quite how much of the world she’s created on previous records is sonic, and when the sounds feel characterless, the lyrics, which are often Travis Scott-level nondescript, certainly don’t do anything to pick up the slack.

Then there’s the one-two of immaculate singles Girlie-Pop! and S.M.O., and it’s like the record has put its finger in a plug socket. Suddenly, it’s so much richer, emotions feel far more realised, the embracing of regional dance music forms feel less like cursory nods, and it’s banger after banger all the way home. Dove Cameron mixes her voice at its most delicate with a beat equal parts lumpen and live wire, while Fineshyt does exactly what earlier tracks failed to do, corralling a supermarket sweep of influences into something that feels utterly of itself. It happens again and again across the back half of the album, and shows the star-making brilliance Amaarae possesses in spades but had been missing in the record’s early stages.

Listen to: S.M.O, Dove Cameron, 100DRUM