Amaarae: Fountain Baby review – sexy, sparkling dream pop

While the potential of a truly global post-internet pop is something that has felt increasingly realised of late, few artists are doing it like Amaarae. Ama Serwah Genfi grew up between Ghana and Atlanta, and her 2020 debut, The Angel You Don’t Know, was blissful. Fountain Baby, her second full-length, feels more ambitious and nonchalant. Her songs here draw on left-leaning US chart music (sonic touchstones include the production work of Timbaland, Missy Elliott and the Neptunes), alongside a broader palette: flashes of humid dancehall, flamenco, breathy dream pop, Japanese folk, sultry highlife and heady trap.

There is a playfulness to Amaarae’s sweet and wispy vocal above it all, as on Aquamarie Luvs Ecstasy, which finds Janet Jackson-esque giggles and spoken word (fitting, for a record that deals in longing and hedonism). Standouts such as Sex, Violence, Suicide, with its riot grrrl-adjacent punk and scuzzy surfer guitars, or the shiny pop of Co-Star, where she muses on the zodiac, show the boundless scope of her sound.

Amaarae’s sweet, wispy vocals dance over shuffling polyrhythms, rich brass and brash gunshots, singing of longing, hedonism and the zodiac. This is a sexy, sparkling snapshot of borderless youth in 2023, with Amaarae emerging as an ascendant star.