Unconventional, edgy, free-spirited, and multi-talented, Amaarae’s career is built on nonconformity and pushing boundaries with her creativity. From her aesthetics to gender-bending sonics, her rise to fame has been marked by her setting herself apart.
In her breakout year in 2017, she became an integral part of the Alté movement, reshaping the soundscape of West African music from Ghana to Nigeria. Earning the moniker “Bad Bitch Whisperer,” Amaarae grew her community brick by brick, as it’s said, off the likeness of her music, brand, and lyrics. Her EP, Passionfruit Summers, offered a hint of the type of artist she aimed to be. As such, it was not surprising that her debut album, TAYDK, was well received worldwide, yielding her first global hit, “Sad Girlz Luv Money.” Her fusion of R&B, highlife, funk, electric, and other sounds of diverse cultural elements puts her at the forefront of artists pushing the boundaries of sound.
Building on the success of TAYDK, she would go on a solo album run with Fountain Baby, which would solidify her position as one of Africa’s global pop stars. Spinning hits like “Co-Star,” “Princess Going Digital,” and “Angels In Tibet. Presently, Amaarae’s resume boasts of tours around the world as a solo act and tours with Childish Gambino and Sabrina Carpenter. She also made history with her set at Coachella in 2025 and other appearances at major festivals, including the Governor’s Ball.
In the spirit of pushing boundaries with her art and identity, Amaarae would drop her 3rd album, “Blackstar,” in 2025. The album, according to Amaarae, symbolizes her identity as a Ghanaian, Blackness, ancestry, and representation for Ghana.
In a conversation with Ghana Music, Amaarae opens up about the shift in music, her relationship with Ghanaian Black Star, the Blackout concert, and everything in between.
GM – Looking back at when you started out and now, what would you say has been a significant improvement in the music then and now?
AMAARAE: I think music is in a worse place than it was then. From my personal experience, discoverability for new artists and unique artists with unique voices is becoming increasingly difficult. I don’t think that the industry or labels are putting in marketing fuel, creating visibility, or taking moments for artists that are creating and really amplifying that. I’m someone who really enjoys finding new music and trying to shed light on things that I find. But I find it really interesting that there’s so much intriguing music out, and there are no real platforms to give these voices a proper space to be heard. SoundCloud was a really big one; the blog era really helped a lot. I feel we threw that away, and we are bound to just the pain of an algorithm. It becomes increasingly difficult to find artists whose strong suit may not be in serving the algorithm.
GM- 2017 was a turning point in Ghanaian music history for many reasons. Do you feel enough was done in that year to properly prepare the Ghanaian market for change?
AMAARAE: I think the audience isn’t solely responsible for that. A lot of artists at that time underestimated how much work it takes to scale a career. Artists underestimated the capacity that it takes to be present and disciplined and forward-thinking and also consider the fact that this is a terrain that is ever evolving. So you have to evolve with it. I think once the artists aren’t doing that and moving the culture and conversation forward, the audience can only do so much with what they’re given. So, no, I don’t think anything was learned from that period, sadly. But, hopefully, we can, but there’s still time.
GM: People talk about Fountain Baby a lot, but I like to think TAYDK is where the sauce is at. How important was the success of TAYDK to the success of Fountain Baby?
AMAARAE: Once I saw that people liked me being experimental, I was like, Oh, I can literally do whatever I want to do and never look back. And I think that was kind of how TAYDK informed Fountain Baby. Fountain Baby is a more complete version of what started on TAYDK.
GM: Do you feel bothered by the talks about you not being Ghanaian enough? Especially knowing that you’ve always been in touch with your Ghanaian roots and worked with Ghanaian creatives throughout your career?
AMAARAE: I know it’s necessary for them to see me and hear me, and then whatever decision they want to make about me after the fact, they are free to do it. But my existence is necessary in the creative space because I think it’s broken the mold and allowed people to see that there’s a way forward where you don’t have to give in to making stereotypical popular Ghanaian music.
Also, it’s a difficult relationship because I think people here like what they are familiar with or like what they understand. So that’s where I think the friction actually comes from. I’m not easy to understand, and I’m not trying to make myself easy to understand. I’m still going to do it because I think there are a lot of girls and boys that need the space or need someone to create the space for them to do whatever they want.
GM: You have represented Ghana and your Blackness very well throughout your career, even before this new album. Why was it important for you to show up for Ghana, especially with everything that happened between you and the Ghanaian market?
AMAARAE: I think it’s important to be clear about who you are, and it’s not just blackness. It’s being an African woman and being a Ghanaian woman. I always wanted to make sure that young women like me could see themselves in creative spaces. So whether it’s on television, whether it’s hearing themselves on a song, or whether it’s looking at a vision from a three-sixty standpoint. I don’t just sing the songs, you know; I write them, I produce them, and I executive produce my albums. All of my rollouts come from my marketing. The visual identity of my albums is built because I sit down and mood board by hand. I think it’s important, for young Black women especially, to understand that process is an important practice for growth. I think that’s what I try to represent to young women, especially coming out of Ghana specifically.
GM- One thing you have been vocal about is your imagery. You’ve always merged your sound and image nicely. How important is it for an artist to make sure the music they hear and the image they see are not distorted?
AMAARAE: I think people are better at seeing than hearing. So if you can’t convey a message to them visually, then I think you need to give up on them even trying to listen to what you have to say. So being able to tell a story visually or send a message visually is honestly to me, as important as the sound. But I’ve seen people get away with a lot of subpar stuff because they know how to brand and create an aesthetic and sometimes the product, meaning the music itself or whatever art it is that they’re pursuing or promoting, isn’t up to standard, but they can sell on an image, on a lifestyle, so I think that that should tell you how important imagery and visual identity is.
GM: There has many conflicting views on the BlackStar project. Do you feel people didn’t fully grasp the theme you were going for?
AMAARAE: Black Star, to me, is my favorite project, but it’s also my most divisive work, where no one is in the middle of it. It’s either people hate it or love it, and I think that even being able to do that as an artist, to start a conversation like that, and having people be torn and continue to discuss it is what’s most important to me. I just feel people were annoyed, probably because it leaned towards electronic music, and I think Africans or Ghanaians specifically don’t even understand the relationship that they have with electronic music because Azonto is electronic music, and I can’t believe that went over everybody’s heads. Like, there are so many aspects in the last ten years that have borrowed from electronic music, and I can’t believe that when that is pushed to the boundary or when that is turned over on its head, people don’t sit down and think, “I wonder what she’s trying to say,” or “I wonder what she’s trying to do.”
Nxwrth started this thing with the synths in a highlife context, and then they just happened, and then it dropped, and no one picked up the mantle again. So for me, doing Black Star was to just say, “Hey guys, there are so many genres in the world that we can fuse with everything that we are doing here.” And that will then kind of create a cross-cultural conversation between ourselves and our brothers and sisters all over the world, or just between ourselves here in Ghana as a community. We need to start being bolder with the sounds and the sonic textures because everything is really just flat and boring at the moment.
GM: Months down the line, do you feel people’s understanding of what Blackstar represents as an album has changed?
AMAARAE: I’ve had to leave Ghana and become something out of Ghana to then be able to come back and be able to really be in the conversation here. So I felt now that I’ve kind of achieved what I wanted to achieve outside of Ghana, it’s time to bring it back home, and it’s time for someone to step up as a true representative of the country. I thought, who better, in my personal opinion, to do it? And I thought it was important for it to be a woman as well. Sometimes I feel like Ghanaians want me to really go above and beyond to explain myself to them, and I’m not. The album is there; if you like it, you like it; if you don’t, you don’t. But the great thing about music is that it lasts forever, so someone might not like it today and might like it five years from now.
But at the end of the day, it’s a piece of art that is meant to start and foster a conversation. I don’t think that there’s anything that I feel, in my spirit, as unfulfilled, and I think it will connect eventually, to be honest. And if it doesn’t, then it just doesn’t, and we go again.
GM: How important do you believe it is for women artists to have the freedom to be completely expressive in their music—whether they’re exploring their desires, sharing their personal experiences, or challenging societal expectations?
AMAARAE: I represent to myself, like, a form of independence and a form of clarity about who I am that’s unwavering. And when I speak in an interview and I’m representing myself but also, like, a culture, I think it’s important for me to be clear in my message and clear in my mission. But it’s also because I also want other women to be clear in their message and clear in their mission as well and to understand that at least where Amaree is concerned, I hold space for all women to be themselves and to do what they want to do unapologetically.
GM: Let us talk about some music business. What are some pointers you would like to give to people who want to learn the ropes but don’t know where to start?
AMAARAE: Like, 500% because you are the business as the artist, and your art is the product. There is no “I just create, and their business is their business.” It is 1000% in your best interest to sit and understand what a royalty means, what your publishing means, what your neighboring rights mean, and also what budgets look like. You should never shoot a video or an interview or do a piece of press or shoot a piece of content, and you don’t know exactly where each dollar is going to, what each person that’s salaried on the project is costing, and why. All of that is very necessary, and I think that any artist that abandons the business of what they do is not a serious person who wants to have a legacy ten or fifteen years down the line. Because even the way that you create is affected by the business but also by what you want your business model to represent.
GM: You did the pop-up back in April, and now the Blackstar concert.
AMAARAE: I feel like everyone is very live band or DJ oriented, and this concert has a really cool built out, rave synergy, but it’s also transient with a really cool synth experience. So I’m really interested to see how people respond to this format, you know what I mean? I haven’t performed here in so long and this is the place where I’m most excited to do the show because the experience that I’ve had in Ghana has been so… Punctuality is definitely an issue here, so I really do hope fans show up on time so that we can all go home and sleep by twelve or go to the after party after.
GM: In the interview with Grammy, you mentioned that you would love to put out a gospel album, a jazz album and a Christmas album, possibly in the next five years. Let’s say you were featuring 5 Ghanaian gospel artists; who would they be?
AMAARAE: Do you know I’ve been trying to work with Daughters of Gloria Jesus for, like, five years. But hopefully, Daughters of Glory Jesus. Esther Smith. I would count the late Daddy Lumba too. There’s a lot that I would have liked to do with Daddy Lumba personally. I think he’s such an incredible artist who doesn’t really get the credits truly for what he represents artistically and what he’s been able to do, especially in Ghana.
GM: What should your fans expect next from you in the coming years?
AMAARAE: I think what’s coming next is going to shock everybody. It’s yet another frontier that even I am surprised is kind of popping up so early, but I’m definitely getting to express another side of my creativity and really build my profile in a way that I hadn’t thought possible. So I think that is going to be a really big moment once again for Ghana also. I can’t say too much about that. So that’s all I’ll say. And then, also, going into other genres, like, I think for sure my gospel, jazz, and Christmas album will all come.
