AMAARAE, THE ANGEL YOU DONT KNOW
Ghanaian artist Amaarae is one of her own. Last november, she released melancholic while bouncy debut-album THE ANGEL YOU DON’T KNOW, a 14-tracks 35 minutes-lasting complex and sensitive project with a enigmatic name.
But who’s that angel?
Between the angel feeding our self-love and the angel who could be embodied by another human giving love to give us, the answer might be both. Blending an urge for obsessive and attractive independence of all kinds, the project highlights this common self and collective emotional duality. There’s so many hints of exhilarating freedom in THE ANGEL YOU DON’T KNOW. “And I need favor from no one but God, plus I’ve got me“ (LEAVE ME ALONE). It feels like the whole project is a metonymy for such leitmotiv : I love you but I (should) love myself more.
Here we are listening and listening over again to an introspective project illustrating the need of sincerity, neither matter the place, nor the people. Though, the people do matter. And though, the album still infuses the strength to certify and feel that self-sufficiency-built personal mindset. Naturally sprinkle some ego-trip-tinted confidence versed, justified by moves of determination, achievements, an insatiable self-trust and self awareness. The album is an artistic form collecting memories.“I don’t make songs. Bitch I make memory”, she claims, while performing 8th track “Hellz Angel”, featuring Nigerian artist Odunsi (The Engine) on this Zelda-ambianced production. And as love is the most human shared tendency, she sings about it.
Yes, THE ANGEL YOU DON’T KNOW genuinely talks about instant or long-lastin’ love for things and people. The magnetic connective relationship two individuals be living. Somebody attracts another at some point they forgot the one who was before holding their hand, now there’s a stronger new magic spell, : “You gon’ make me leave, the one I’m with, jumping ship”, she sing along with British artist Kojey Radical in “JUMPING SHIT”, an expression describing the act of quitting a job. A craving while unstoppable feeling we often go through while meeting one soulmate. “Who can I run to when you ain’t there?” When two brains interact and develop the attentiveness and need of the other one’s. “Where have you been all of my life? That’s on Christ, I would sacrifice for you” (3am). Love is a subject she experiences, abandoning herself into, acknowledging the burning impossibility to control. “You said I’m the reason you lost your mind, I just keep believing in all your lies” (PARTY SAD FACE/CRAZY WURLD).
“I don’t make songs. Bitch I make memory”
To take and to give, it’s the natural order of the universe. Even when it comes to the love we have for an art, a certain field, an activity. It’s like a tetris game, both shapes slot.
But the feeling also consists in meeting the kind of soulmate the body’s also wired to.An invisible strong and intense link that she often refers to. Definitely sensual and sexual, the album is a piece of its kind. “You dancing way too nasty, We might just end up fuckin’” (FANTASY). And once again, the sensuality also refers to the sensuality we can personally nourish toward ourselves;loving our proper reflection in the mirror. “Cuz I feel so damn fancy”, an act of fulfilling and assuming to the world one’s identity.
In LEAVE ME ALONE, her ethereal voice claims ’“all the diamonds in the world don’t outshine me” , we understand everyone has their own journey, so no comparison is needed. As we choose to get out lives blooming, we earn way more from focusing on our goals than by wasting our energy on “not mine business”.
Therefore, focusing our own business is investing in growing money and freedom. “I heard you got a fetish for dolla signs” says Nigerian rising-star C Kay in “FANTASY’”S Verse 2, a materialistic desire she cultivates cause money often says possibilities and ability to chose the infinite forms of aesthetic items we can buy, use and adorn ourselves with. Once again, the image behind seems to be beyond an appetite for luxury but seems to be an affirmation of freedom, something we also feel in her choice for solitude.“For the night, I’m riding solo, Don’t want no odo just leave me alone. And solitude is not loneliness, it’s a taste for being alone, it’s chosen. It’s welcoming our own-self.
It depicts a libertarian, ambitious and epicurean feeling of truly livin and feelin.
Hybrid and fantasmagorical project with a gothic aesthetic, Amaarae’s album is a solemn and celestial one underlying gratitude. “Daddy did the dirty work already” (TRUST FUND BABY). In CÉLINE, Amaarae introduces crystallin lyrical chant, with a gritty-crystallin voice. It’s the belief of believing in a spiritual and goddess form of power transcending everything. This album is a cloudy, rough and poetic one where concrete and abstract, words and feelings coexist. And she does not give a damn about making explicit her taste for alcohol, party, drugs and the altered conscience of those disinhibited states, often she enjoys this “too much liquor”. A desire for psychedelic atmospheres and spontaneous feelings, climaxed senses.
The bright, singular, innovative and eclectic project THE ANGEL YOU DON’T KNOW has a rebellious and rock tone using English, Ghanaian, French and German words. It depicts a libertarian, ambitious and epicurean feeling of truly livin and feelin. And with her enchanting and jerky singing-style, Amaarae enhances the feelings of accepted and celebrated vulnerability, a powerful energy conveying to us human strength and beauty.
Intimate aesthetic and clear round-project.