Fountain Baby, Amaarae (8/10)

Part of huge drop day (6/9/23), Amaarae dropped her sophomore album, "Fountain Baby" with Golden Angel. I saw that Pitchfork had loved this album, and I was super psyched cuz her debut was one of my top albums of 2020. I started listening to it this morning and got about halfway thru and was kind of disappointed lowkey. Then I got high and put it on my dad's hi-fi speakers and fuckk it really was 10x better than I had thought. Hearing it on the speakers, the production is so good and there's so much that I hadn't heard while multitasking and hearing it out of my computer. The album also does some really cool stuff after where I had stopped the first time. "Sex, Violence, Suicide" starts with a minimalist ballad and then about halfway thru transitions to a kind of Riotgrrrl esque punk song. Awesome!! Part of what I've always luved about Amaarae is how much she's willing to explore and genre bend. This album is also so gay lmao and a perfect gift for Pride month.  While "Co-Star" is not my fav song, it's so funny that she just roasts all the signs lol. So gay. It's jazzy at points. It's rocky at points. It's poppy at points. This album also has some interesting Asian influence with "Angels in Tibet" being a song title and some dif melodies/instruments clearly influenced by various Asian sounds. Favorite tracks: Reckless & Sweet, Aquamarine Luvs Ecstasy, Come Home To God,