The 50 best albums of 2023, No 9 – Amaarae: Fountain Baby

Refusing categorisation, the Ghanaian-American singer’s lavish second album tears through alté, punk, R&B, flamenco, trap, g-funk and soft rock in a voracious pursuit of pleasure

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When the Ghanaian-American singer, songwriter and producer Amaarae emerged internationally from west Africa’s alté scene in 2020, she told Pitchfork: “I want to be the quintessential African princess of pop.” This year, ahead of the release of her second record, Fountain Baby, she had upgraded her ambitions, stating: “Fountain Baby is a pop album above all else. It should not be pigeonholed solely as an ‘Afrobeats’ project.” Defying limited cultural and social imaginations, confidently stating and fulfilling her desires, coining instant, snappy, addictively slangy hits: these are the qualities that actually define the 29-year-old pop star, whose voracious ambition and ability to execute it puts her in conversation with the likes of Björk and Rosalía.

As promised, Fountain Baby is a lavish and playful album with a borderless vision shaped by Amaarae’s upbringing between Accra and Atlanta: yes, there are the sleek percussive elements of Afrobeats, along with the euphoric boundlessness of alté, but there are just as many nods to, say, the cascading vocal delivery of southern US trap, or breathy Janet Jackson-esque trills. Revelling in excess and ambiguity, densely saturated and constantly shapeshifting, Amaarae’s experimentation also takes in punk, R&B, flamenco, melodic rap, g-funk, soft rock and more, all topped off with her sugar-sweet voice.