“I’m a material bitch,” Amaarae declares on ‘100DRUM’, “but I know the worth of a mind.” On ‘B2B’, she repeats the word “heart” more times than probably any body part mentioned on her new album. And yes, it’s called Black Star and Naomi Campbell appears on one song, but its best track is probably the PinkPantheress duet, which says a lot about its yearning emotionality. Black Star is as exuberant, reckless, and lavish as the Ghanaian American visionary’s major label debut, Fountain Baby, but it’s also mindful and sensitive as it expands on her globalist, Afrodiasporic vision of club music. The more time she spends in the club, the softer – yet no less inventive – her music becomes. You can get off a dozen different drugs, she knows, but no high can match that of a love that outlasts the rush.
1. Stuck Up
The opener frames Black Star as a clubbier record than its predecessor: buzzing, jagged, and outright funny. “If I fuck a bitch in a truck, hmm, did I put a 10 in a coma?” she quips, before declaring that her album “went Blackinum.” Black Star deserves the same recognition, and then some.
2. Starkilla [feat. Bree Runway and Starkillers]
Amaarae and Bree Runway repeat the words “ketamine, coke and molly” over a house beat on the chorus, offering little context beyond the fact they’re about to serve somebody. Their voices glitch in the background, part of a few subtle switches to an otherwise straightforward song. But the real twist, foreshadowed by Amaarae’s reminder that “love is free,” comes from Runway: “Ketamine, molly and I don’t even take that shit/ I’m already high as shit off of my life and shit.” Different kind of shit worth exalting in.
3. ms60 [feat. Naomi Campbell]
It’s funny that Naomi Campbell strutted her way into both Black Star and the latest Miley Cyrus album; there isn’t a whiff of a story to her appearance here, as there was on Something Beautiful, but it has a similar effect – converging, of course, on the word “pose.” With rumbling drums and bass that contort at the last minute, it raises the pulse even higher.
4. Kiss Me Thru The Phone pt 2 [feat. PinkPantheress]
Love may be free, but it’s not easy, especially in a digital world. Serving as a sequel to the Soulja Boy original, Amaarae’s PinkPantheress collab languishes in that kind of yearning. It’s Black Star’s unlikely gem, a 180 from the album’s boastful opening run that showcases its gentle heart. On an album where skin-to-skin contact is paramount and various substances course through your body, the loneliness of ‘Kiss Me’ is all the more sharp.
5. B2B
At first, ‘B2B’ seems to turn her attention back to the simple dynamics of sex, but it doesn’t take long for the melancholy of ‘Kiss Me’ to stream back in. Unlike the amapiano of ‘ms60’, the beat here disintegrates to the rhythm of the relationship in question, with Amaarae admitting, “I can’t even miss your body/ Your spirit needs too much work.” Over Spanish guitar that puts a delicate spin on her vulnerability, she keeps landing on the phrase “my heart” as if holding on to it. It’s as sad as a house track can get, and you’ll want to play it that much louder.
6. She Is My Drug
As she spins Cher’s ‘Believe’, you’d be forgiven for mishearing Amaarae sing “Do you believe in love after drugs?”, but “off the drugs” is much more fitting. Feeding off the complicated tension of ‘B2B’, you can feel her faith withering away over muted production, her vocals breaking apart at “Really don’t think you’re strong enough.”
7. Girlie-Pop
The album’s thesis arrives exactly at the halfway point, revelling in the simple pleasure of “switching genres into pop.” But in context, it’s also about the “sweet release of love,” the kiss that felt so distant on the PinkPatheress duet. ‘Girlie-Pop’ is the shortest track on the record, evidence that you don’t need much more to fuel your daydreams.
8. S.M.O.
Two months after the single’s release, I still can’t stop thinking about the line “I wanna week with her, she taste like Lexapro.” But now I can’t ignore how the unabashedly sweaty track also dissolves towards the end, with the singer’s lover threatening to “blow my high” and bring her to tears with a single look. “You don’t need sex to slut,” she declares at one point. You don’t need it for power, either.
9. Fineshyt
Amaarae can do pure hedonism just fine, but she wants a little more, which is exactly the subject of ‘Fineshyt’. “The rush has subsided,” she admits early on, yet lingers in it over trance synths that are a little too sparse to feel like a throwback. “Don’t you feel the sadness?” By this point, you surely do, but you want to stay for that final stretch.
10. Dove Comeron
No, there’s no hidden feature here – Amaarae can really switch up her cadence like that, the most interesting element of a song that otherwise doesn’t add much to the progression of Black Star.
11. Dream Scenario [feat. Charlie Wilson]
Amaarae has been holding back tears this whole time, but no more. She does away with drums and fashions an orchestra around her vocals, never more moving than in their high-pitched, AutoTuned falter. “I know my heart is sensitive,” she sings, leaning forward: “What are you gonna do with it?” Charlie Wilson’s appearance turns the song into something transcendent, like the heavenly breath Amaarae longs for. At the end of the day, it can overpower every misalignment.
12. 100DRUM [feat. Zacari]
After owning her sincerity on ‘Dream Scenario’, Amaarae’s voice sinks even lower, veering into paranoia. The song itself is subtly mesmeric until the breakdown, where it’s slathered with effects and barely holds itself together.
13. FREE THE YOUTH
Hyped-up and abrasive like the record’s first few songs, ‘FREE THE YOUTH’ makes Black Star feel like a spiral, both spiritually and musically akin to post-After Hours the Weeknd (‘tears in the club’ producer El Guincho worked on the track). It jumps and jitters at the edge of ecstasy, its refrain of “Day by day I used to pray” turning it into an anthem of defiance. As she wraps up her vision of Black pop stardom, she may be in line with some of her decadent contemporaries, but she’ll always be on a different high.
