Since coming on the scene, we’ve watched Ghanaian-American artist Amaarae blend pop, hyperpop, alté, and Afropop in the most pleasant way.  Her debut The Angel You Don’t Know announced her as a fearless alté-pop innovato. But the glossy Fountain Baby was more expansive and luxurious, mixing strings, punk, and global sounds into a critically acclaimed, genre-defying statement. With Black Star, the Ghanaian-American singer finds herself traversing deeper into to a club-ready sound, fusing tech-house, pop, and electronica into a glamorous reinvention of her artistry. 

Fresh off making history as the first Ghanaian artist to perform a solo set at Coachella, Black Star presents a singer unafraid to be audacious with her sound. It’s also Amaarae at her most unapologetically sensual. She is raw, edgy, and unafraid to state her needs. She wants pleasure at all costs.

Beyond the title’s nod to Ghana’s national emblem, Black Star radiates Black excellence in its sound, its writing, and its collaborations. The album even transcends music when Amaarae joins forces with the Black Star of fashion, Naomi Campbell, on “Ms60”.

The opener, “Stuck Up,” is exactly how you start an album. A Brazilian funk–flavoured track drenched in euphoria, it immediately signals that Amaarae is ready to take things up a notch from Fountain Baby. In this current era, she spikes her soda, claims the title of “trappest in the city,” and makes her intentions clear. That momentum barrels straight into “Starkilla,” a dark house cut featuring British-Ghanaian rapper Bree Runway. While the repetitive hook—“ketamine, coke and molly”—flirts with monotony, it still reinforces Amaarae’s unfiltered desire to party hard.

Despite sounding futuristic, Black Star pauses to nod at the past with back-to-back tracks “Ms60” and “Kiss Me Thru the Phone Pt. 2.” In “Ms60,” Naomi Campbell joins Amaarae in defining what it means to be a Black Star. “They call me a bitch, a villain, controversial diva—no, I am the Black Star,” Campbell declares. Together they revel in luxury with lyrical nods to Versace, Galliano, Dior, and Yves Saint Laurent, all buoyed by skittering Afrobeats percussion and deep amapiano log drums built for the dance floor.

“Kiss Me Thru The Phone Pt. 2” pays homage to American rapper Soulja Boy’s 2009 hit track “Kiss Me Thru The Phone,” while exploring the loneliness of digital love in the age of constant connection. PinkPantheress joins Amaarae to channel that longing, with Amaarae confessing, “I soak my favourite sheets at the thought you’d be with me.” Musically, it’s a shimmering Eurotrance throwback to the ’90s, even sampling Sisqó’s “Thong Song.” Of all the experiments on Black Star, this one feels the most natural, powered by Amaarae’s unshakable confidence. “B2B” is a sultry bedroom confession that merges pulsating electro with the euphoria of amapiano. “She Is My Drug” flips the chorus of American singer Cher’s 1998 Eurodance classic “Believe”—“Do you believe in love off the drugs?”—into something more sensual and submissive, continuing the pleas first heard in “B2B” where Amaarae asks the object of her desire to rub her bosom. 

Her pursuit of pleasure continues in “Girlie-Pop!,” where she urges, “I want you to take me from the top.” Jersey club’s jagged drums mingle with highlife’s swaying sensuality, reflecting her own lyric: “Flip positions, switching genres ’til you make it pop.” On “S.M.O.” (“Slut Me Out”), the lead single, Amaarae sings to a female love interest again, continuing to own her identity unapologetically. The alté star’s queer identity is a through line in her music: from the playful swagger of “I like it when you call me zaddy” on The Angel You Don’t Know’s “Fancy,” to the sensual confession “I like when my remedies connect / That pussy and a bed” on Fountain Baby’s “Angels in Tibet,” and then, the unabashed desire of “I’m wavy, I wanna taste her” on Black Star’s “S.M.O.”. She goes on to tease “she slutty, I need her loose” on “S.M.O.”, a house track that fuses Detroit ghettotech with South African gqom. And Amaarae is in pure party mode in “Fineshyt.” “There’s room in my body / I taught it to party,” she sings as she lays claim to her on-and-off lover. Eurotrance melodies and heavy log drums wrap around her playful word salads about a “sexy machine.” “Dove Cameron,” named after the Disney-child-star-turned-pop-star, is far from Disney entertainment; it’s full of sex and drug references. Yet the falsetto delivery over Afropop and baile funk keeps it compelling.

“Dream Scenario” slows the pace with the album’s calmest moment, a drumless, string-laden devotion to Amaarae’s “Black Barbie.” And the 72-year-old American R&B legend Charlie Wilson slides in unexpectedly with buttery, reassuring vocals: “It’s all about you, you, you, sweet baby,” softening an otherwise over-filtered vocal mix. The baile funk beat resurfaces in “100DRUM,” starting in Akan, the most spoken language in Ghana, before spilling into a familiar sped-up dance groove supported by breezy hand drums and a celestial choir. Amaarae closes Black Star as she began—hot, fast, and high energy—with “Free The Youth,” a dembow-inspired techno anthem that feels like both an invocation and a rebellion. “I had to get it, I’m taking the wheel,” she asserts, riding a swelling finale into the distance.

Even when Black Star edges toward chaos, it remains a fearless statement. Melody may sometimes take a back seat to experimentation, but at its best, it’s the sound of an artist willing to fail, to entertain, and to speak her mind through daring fusion of various sounds and audacious lyrics.