Black Star is the third studio album by Ghanaian-American singer Amaarae, released on August 8, 2025, through Golden Child Entertainment and Interscope Records. The album follows her critically acclaimed 2023 record Fountain Baby and takes a more playful approach, drawing inspiration from Ghanaian highlife, baile funk and dance music rooted in Black cultural heritage.
Following the release of her critically acclaimed second album Fountain Baby in 2023, Amaarae spent the next two years performing at festivals and collaborating with various artists, including Janelle Monáe, Rina Sawayama and Childish Gambino.[2] Her third album Black Star explores both her identity as a woman and as an artist. The title serves as a "triple entendre", referencing her Ghanaian heritage, her sense of self and the Black cultural origins of the dance music that influenced the record. Amaarae described the album as a "genesis of me feeling sure and confident". She also noted feeling a stronger connection to her Ghanaian audience during its creation. Unlike the more serious tone of Fountain Baby, Black Star sees the singer having more fun. Amaarae co-produced the album with longtime collaborator Kyu Steed, traveling to Brazil to work with baile funk producers. The project also features contributions from el Guincho and Bnyx.[3]
The lead single, "S.M.O.", released on June 20, draws inspiration from Ghanaian highlife.[4] Its music video was directed by Ghanaian filmmaker Omar Jones[5] and is supposed to celebrate "beauty and power of the Black body", inspired by "Donna Summer mixed with Control era Janet", particularly the latter's "The Pleasure Principle" (1987) and the former's "Love to Love You Baby" (1975).[6]
On August 8, 2025, the album Black Star was released, alongside the official music video for "Fineshyt".[7]
Black Star received widespread acclaim from critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream publications, the album received an average score of 82, based on 8 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[9] The review aggregator site AnyDecentMusic? compiled 7 reviews and gave the album an average of 7.3 out of 10, based on their assessment of the critical consensus.[8]
Pitchfork's Walden Green awarded the album with "best new music" and 8.8 out of 10 rating, and wrote, "Black Star is the record you make when you can finally afford the best drugs and the suite with a view, lavish them on a lover (or several), and begin to ask yourself: Is this all there is?"[12] Shaad D'Souza of The Guardian gave it four out of five stars rating and wrote, "It's fitting for an album that is deliriously in love with wealth, celebrity and all the power it affords. There is a difference between Amaarae and all the other stars fixated on such topics: for her, glamour is a side quest and love is the motive. Shopping at Saks and being passed another blunt might be nice, Amaarae seems to say, but the real high comes from finding someone to share it with."[1]
"B2B" contains an interpolaton of "Maybe" (2000), written by John Smith, Keith Crouch, Mechalie Jamison, Samuel Gause and Toni Braxton, as performed by Toni Braxton.
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