THE ANGEL YOU DON'T KNOW arrived in 2020, Fountain Baby in 2023, and between them Amaarae changed what international listeners expected from African pop. The template they had in mind was mid-tempo Afrobeats. She answered with punk guitars, Y2K Japanese pop, whisper-funk, and songwriting that ignored the brief entirely.

Black Star, released on August 8, 2025, aims at a bigger canvas still. The title refers to Ghana's national emblem and to Marcus Garvey's shipping line, and the album sets out to push African pop into a hyper-stylised, afro-futuristic register. Across 13 tracks it very nearly does. What holds it back is not a shortage of ideas. It is the number of them.

The trouble with maximalism

Fountain Baby worked because every wild pivot was anchored to a pop song you could hum on the way home. On Black Star that balance slips.

Amaarae throws in everything: four-on-the-floor garage breaks, metallic industrial distortion, Brazilian funk, choral gospel. When an arrangement leaves room for her melodies, the result is euphoric. Too often it does not. The whisper is her best instrument, and here it spends much of the record competing with production loud enough to bury the hook.

The tracklist

1. Stuck Up & 2. Starkilla (feat. Bree Runway, Starkillers)

Stuck Up opens on icy, menacing bass, holding a haughty runway pose before crashing into Starkilla. British-Ghanaian rapper Bree Runway and Starkillers turn the second half into four-on-the-floor electro-punk, trading verses with supervillain relish. It is the sharpest jolt on the record.

3. ms60 (feat. Naomi Campbell) & 4. Kiss Me Thru The Phone Pt 2 (feat. PinkPantheress)

ms60 hands the mic to Naomi Campbell for a spoken-word passage built entirely around runway drama. It works as a setup for the album's best song. Kiss Me Thru The Phone Pt 2 brings in PinkPantheress for a buoyant 2-step garage track that interpolates Soulja Boy. Their airy vocals trade lines over skittering breakbeats, and the whole thing sounds effortless in a way nothing else here quite manages.

5. B2B, 6. She Is My Drug, & 7. Girlie-Pop!

The midsection goes for chaotic club hedonism. Girlie-Pop! pulls it off: sugary, bouncy, genuinely joyful. B2B and She Is My Drug do not. Between the abrasive tempo switches and the erratic vocal processing, both sound closer to unfinished runway demos than finished songs.

8. S.M.O.

S.M.O. tries to bridge the album's two halves with hypnotic percussion and low-end hums. It drifts for four minutes without finding a hook, and ends up functioning as transitional glue.

9. Fineshyt & 10. Dove Cameron

The back half restores some breathing room. Fineshyt rides a sultry, liquid guitar groove and finally lets Amaarae's sensuality carry a song on its own. Dove Cameron goes hazy and psychedelic, with a vulnerability that lands because it is not competing with anything.

11. Dream Scenario (feat. Charlie Wilson) & 12. 100DRUM (feat. Zacari)

Charlie Wilson is the unexpected coup here. His gospel tenor on Dream Scenario sets up a dialogue across generations that the album does not really earn anywhere else. 100DRUM, with TDE's Zacari, drifts into psychedelic trap and is pleasant enough, though its languid pace sits oddly this late in the running order.

13. FREE THE YOUTH

The album closes on FREE THE YOUTH, a tribute to the Accra creative collective that reshaped Ghanaian youth culture. Celebratory horns, communal chants, live percussion. It is the one moment where the scale of the production matches the scale of the idea.

The verdict

Black Star is a bold record from one of the most inventive minds in African music. At 7/10, its highs, particularly Kiss Me Thru The Phone Pt 2 and FREE THE YOUTH, belong alongside the best of her catalogue.

The restless maximalism and the erratic sequencing keep it short of Fountain Baby, though. It is a thrilling and occasionally exhausting listen, and it suggests that the next Amaarae record might be a better one for a little restraint.