Amaarae review – from punk swagger to silky singing, there’s nothing this pop star can’t do
Ghanaian-American singer Amaarae’s breakthrough Afropop track Sad Girlz Luv Money became a viral sensation in 2021, thanks to an audacious combination of sweet and innocent feathery vocals with snotty, money-grubbing, lustful lyrics. Her second album Fountain Baby – No 9 in the Guardian’s best albums of 2023 – went further still. With a genreless blend of west Africa’s leftfield alté sound, riot grrrlesque mall-rock, and seductive dream pop, the album’s ambition and scope was focused through Amaarae’s consistent themes of love, lust, and dancing – themes which now translate magnificently on stage.
She arrives in a red latex number as a two-piece live band of an electric guitarist and drummer opens with instrumental track All My Love and move into Angels in Tibet, Amaarae rapping smoothly through the pacy tempo. The tremolo effect of the guitar and furious clashing cymbals mean that the small venue feels intoxicatingly immersive, and Amaarae duly brings this house down.
With rock star magnetism, she mixes sex appeal with swagger as she flawlessly rattles through energetic performances of Fountain Baby tracks Disguise, Sociopathic Dance Queen and Princess Going Digital. The album is so strong that a gig could happily rest on straight renditions, but Amaarae experiments – her track Sex, Violence, Suicide is divided between a sorrowful acoustic guitar melody and a punky uptempo coda, and rather than playing the whole track, she performs these two halves at different, appropriate parts of the show. Sitting down for a rendition of Reckless & Sweet backed by a single guitar riff, Amaarae slows the performance to focus on the silky beauty of her voice.
The span of influences for Fountain Baby is honoured on stage: two red kanji symbols flash in the background as she performs Wasted Eyes, a track which interpolates a sample of the Japanese folk song Battaki by Umeko Ando. Older tracks are also well integrated, with Fancy, Leave Me Alone and Jumping Ship, the latter with a fun guest appearance from Kojey Radical. Variety is Amaarae’s strength – as thrilling as a bank heist, as luxurious as sex on thousand-dollar sheets – and whatever vibe she turns to, she delivers.
• Amaarae performs at Here at Outernet, London, 13 March