It's Women's History Month, so we're showing some serious love from home to our favorite female artists. Pass the time at your casa, and share it with your cat, your plant and your friends on FaceTime.
Dear Raymond
Greetings from the hole!
How are you doing? I don't know if your last few letters got lost on the way down or what but it would be great to hear from you. How is life on the slope? Things are very much the same here, every day we build the mountain and every day we dig a little deeper into the earth. There is a load of new stuff being installed in the pit at the moment, we have a simulated daylight bulb in the centre of our cavern, full spectrum, and it's on at least 5 hours a day. A new set of bird song recordings are being trialled and there is a renewed sense of urgency and hope down here. Yeah it's dark, a lot of the time, very very dark. But we're getting Disney+ soon apparently.
We're yet to hear anything but I guess you must have been ordained by now. So what is the daily life of a “Hellkite”? It must be so bright and the air must be so clean on the mountain. Real trees and real fur and breath and feathers and all the animal things around you. We have our own priests down here of course, and they do their best not to tire of us. They're so kind to give us their time and to warn us about drifting off into the dark. David says they are manipulative but I think they're doing us all a favour. One day we can all be like them, we can all get up the mountain, we just have to follow the rules and keep building. David calls it a pyramid scheme, I said “it's not a pyramid lol it's much, much, much bigger than that”. Is it true the mountain reaches the moon now?
There are rumours about what's at the top. Have you ever heard this? Some say it's a big mirror, 1000 miles wide. Some say it's a video screen and all that's on it is an infinitely reoccurring picture of whoever is looking at it. Is that really true? Why would you want to see yourself a million times over stretching into forever? Sounds mental. I heard some people say it's really a statue up there but the face changes into the highest person on the mountain. This all sounds magical and lovely but I think it's going over my head. Have you seen it? Do they tell you what's at the top?
At the deepest, darkest part of the cave they say there is a snake, an immense golden snake that will eat anyone that comes near. I don't know if it's bollocks or what. The priests are very adamant about it and prevent anyone from talking about it. I think it sounds quite cool. Have you ever heard about this snake? I used to be afraid of it but now I think it's the priests that are afraid of it. On some 'nights' we do hear a rumbling that is quite different to the machinery.
David has got a terrible cough, he says it's from the thick black smoke down here but I don't think the fumes are anywhere near as bad as they used to be. Yes we do still have deaths, quite a lot to be honest. Electricity has become quite expensive so we're using fire a lot of the time for heat. Grandmas are a thing of the past. The mining isn't ideal for my back but that's age for ya. My eyes are also getting worse, some of the pigment has gone from them and it's a bit of a strain to see through the smoke especially in the dark. Who needs eyes though really, I can dig and I can carry and I'm going to do my bit to make the mountain bigger. Kevin's head has flattened right out, it's like a slab of cheese, whatever that is. Also, our skin is translucent, more like a jelly or a tadpole. Again, no idea what a tadpole is. Or a jelly actually. Hair is white but that's normal. We get all the vitamin D we need from food it's not like we need sun, plus we'd actually get burnt to a crisp if we ever went outside.
Handsome William is now one of the many shapes of black and grey that slope through our tunnels. I lent him 101 Dalmatians on CD-ROM but his brain started coming out of his nose. David has started to wear the sign of the snake on his face, he says it's the only way to get what we want.
Teeth. Teeth teeth teeth. They've all gone. Kevin has one or two left but mine are all gone. Can teeth fall out of a brain? That's what I feel like, toothless all over, especially in my noggin. I know we don't technically need them anymore and we do have a lot of flavours now. We've got edible brown, ordinary grey, partially submerged grey, extremely colourful brown — we've got flavours coming out of our ears. That reminds me, I'm mostly deaf now but whatever, there's been an incessant hum for most of my life but it's slowly being replaced by a kind of hissing. Neither of which I'm that bothered about. We've got channels too, hundreds of them. Lots of choice. I watched a true crime series about all these crimes and it was entirely true. Well, I say “watched” but I can't see or hear and we don't have a TV.
I don't know if I've been going mad or what but I just feel like maybe I'm starting to maybe possibly have some doubts about this whole mountain thing. It's just, we never get told when things are going to change. I know the mantra is to keep making it bigger, but when is big enough? It's been growing all my life and my parents' life and their parents' life. It's fucking massive. There are millions of us down here just swimming back and forth in the dark and we're dying without ever seeing a crack of light. It's shit in the pit. Please get back to us, we can't keep waiting we need to know when it's our turn to go up.
We have to know why we're building it, we have to know what's at the top. The mountain is in the exosphere and I'm in a disposable nappy. Toothless in the blackness beating my head against the walls of the cave.
But I'll stick with it, I know I will, it's just around the corner. We'll grow it and we'll win it and we'll expand it and we'll do all the things they want. I just miss you and I want to see the sun one day.
I'm 45% microplastics and 55% mountainhead, what a time to be barely alive.
QF
Everyone had a hand in the ideation and writing process, each adding their own quirks and flare to tracks. Hailing from Denver, Cleveland, Seattle, and Los Angeles respectively, it’s only natural that the band draw inspiration from a wide range of genres and groups. But, as skaters and punks at heart, there are musical throughlines — whether they be LCD Soundsystem, Car Seat Headrest, or Beck.
Their recent single, “What We’re Doing Here,” teases the upcoming album, marking the band’s new direction. Tightly knit and sonically rad, the song wrestles with the fear of ruining new connections and the unpredictable nature of life. While the album title is under wraps, fans can expect its reveal during the band's upcoming spring tour.
Remembering some of their favorite tour moments, Topgun brought us back to their standout performance at the Vegas festival, “Life is Beautiful.” With a huge crowd and unruly pit, the show marked a significant moment for the band. The boys were ripping. Everyone was sweating. Smiles filled the venue — it was a glorious night.
And musical prowess aside, these guys make the most out of touring. They’re not afraid to mess around a bit; the chaos of the moments between shows is what drives the energy of the entire tour. While they aren’t strangers to finding themselves in trouble, they always seem to pull through and deliver a great show. Once, Ethan’s mid-tour skate session resulted in a broken finger, but this was no big deal. The tour continued after some arts-and-crafts improvisation involving duct-tape and drumsticks.
The band’s debut LP promises to be a captivating showcase of their growth and distinctable style. As ALEXSUCKS continues to explore new musical territories by breaking boundaries and bones, all we can do is wait for the album to drop this spring.
AMAARAE wears JACKET by OTTOLINGER, BODYSUIT by ORIENS, SHORTS by I.AM.GIA, SHOES by FANCI CLUB, GLOVES by CARHARTT
Preparation for our conversation began with endless plays, examining the intricate realms in which her music lives: genre-defying songs layered with the experimental production that Amaarae prides herself on. A producer first and foremost, the Ghanaian-American artist understands that singing is simply a welcome embellishment on her first love — sound engineering and intentional production.
In an industry that continues to put artists in a box, Amaarae is not so easily confined. Her unmatched pen, interdisciplinary perspective, and distinctively complex production have built her into a superstar whose creativity takes continually evolving forms. Midway through a triumphant year, Amaarae sat down with us via Zoom — her dog Dior popping in and out of frame — to discuss her creative process, musical influences, astrology, and love for Janet Jackson.
[Originally published in office magazine Issue 20, Fall-Winter 2023. Order your copy here.]
The last few months have been crazy for you. How are you?
Exhausted. Yeah, exhausted, but honestly grateful to be able to do what I do. Also, partially, I'm a little bit nervous about the record and how people are gonna respond to it.
How is Fountain Baby different from your debut album, The Angel You Don’t Know?
It's definitely more cinematic. The approaches to production and songwriting are, I wouldn't say better, but more expansive, and also more intentional. I grew a lot as a vocalist on this album and did more with my voice, and understood the subtlety of even how to use one's voice. Ever since I wanted to make music, this is the level that I've wanted to get to as far as having an idea in my head, and knowing exactly how to execute it. I did a lot of learning this time around.
And you executive produced this whole project?
Yes, sir! A&R’d and executive produced. I’ve executive produced all my albums, along with two of my other execs, KZ and Cube. So this is probably the third project I’ve produced.
That’s amazing! You released your debut EP in 2017, Passionfruit Summers, which introduced your production abilities but also your recognizable voice. What was the journey to finding your sonic style?
It happened a lot during my first EP of understanding what I wanted to communicate, which was sensitivity and vulnerability. I could do that by using my voice in this kind of high-pitched way. But what the development has been, and what the journey has been, is learning the parameters and how to color with my voice. How to make something sound sad, versus something that sounds excited, versus something that has a lot of attitude, versus something that sounds very controlled and subdued. My first project was knowing how I wanted to use my voice, and now it's knowing exactly how to use my voice, which is where I'm at right now.
AMAARAE wears JACKET by OTTOLINGER, BODYSUIT by ORIENS, SHORTS by I.AM.GIA, SHOES by FANCI CLUB, GLOVES by CARHARTT
Now there are more eyes on you with the exposure from social media, specifically TikTok, where you saw your first platinum record, “Sad Girlz Luv Money Remix,” featuring Kali Uchis and Moliy. What’s your relationship with social media? Do you like it, or do you just have to use it for promotion?
I like it for entertainment purposes. I love Twitter. I go on Twitter and see funny jokes and discourse on a range of topics. But as an artist, I grew up watching artists like Michael, Janet, and Britney. So many artists I knew then didn't have to be social media marketers. Their job was to be good at music, sit with people, and figure out how to make a great video for television. How do we do interviews? How do we do XYZ? That was it. It wasn't; you have to create a personality that you sell to people on socials.
I can't tell you the number of times people have said to me, “Yeah, you should just do off-the-cuff content,” and I'm like, “Fuck, no, with all due respect.” I'm an artist, so I care to curate my art. If you're gonna come to my page, I care that the videos you see are curated in a certain way and the outfits are curated in a certain way. I think it's a battle of finding the balance between what works for me and what my boundaries are as far as something completely out of context with what I want to communicate to the world.
TikTok has warped people's perception of what a musical artist is. There is this added pressure and influence on the artist’s career and overall musical output. How do you feel about TikTok’s presence in the industry and the ongoing expectations for artists?
It's interesting how people view TikTok when it comes to music. To me, TikTok has shown, time and again, its ability to shed light on great music and music that previously went under the radar. “Sad Girlz Luv Money” is a great example, because I think it's a great song and I never made that record for TikTok. I just loved making a record about girls wanting money. Or Miguel's “Sure Thing” had an explosive TikTok moment. I liked that song in 2010 and thought it was the best in the world; 15 years later, people are rediscovering it. It's going crazy on the pop charts.
I don't think anyone should set out with the intention to make a record specifically for TikTok; I don’t think those types of songs last as far as impacting culture. But that's what some artists choose to do because they're looking at things from a monetary perspective. For me, I like to make great songs, and the way I make records, people just love to use it for TikTok videos. A lot of people, when I would play “Costar” back to them, pitching the album, they’d be like, “This is such a great TikTok song,” and I was like, “This is actually a musically complex record.” For you to minimize it to, “I bet you wrote this song for TikTok,” like, nah. This is actually a great musical piece if you strip away the fact that we're talking about zodiac signs. It's a real record that we put thought and energy, and effort into. If it happens to do well on TikTok, that's great, but I'm not making records for that purpose.
AMAARAE wears JACKET by GIVENCHY, CROPPED JACKET by DANZ, TOP by OTTOLINGER, PANTS by I.AM.GIA, BELT is STYLIST’S OWN
Unfortunately, people make catchy, fun songs synonymous with TikTok. Or view it as something that should only exist on the internet.
We’re always relegated to, “This is great for TikTok.” Like, it's okay for people to like songs.
You touched on a few musical artists who consumed your youth. Who are some inspirations that influence your craft and approach to music?
I love Stevie Nicks as a songwriter, instrumentalist, and vocalist. She is able to strike a real beauty between what can be edgy and unnerving but with great, soft, very thoughtful lyrics. I also like the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Anthony Kiedis is a great vocalist. I think Flea is a great bassist. And for me, what I like about them is their audacity at the time, and their ability to fuse so many different concepts from jazz to pop to rock and roll to heavy metal, death metal, and funk. The bass guitar is funk. I've talked to Flea before, and you realize he has a very deep knowledge of jazz and funk. He's applied that in their music. When I think about Janet and Michael Jackson — legendary entertainers that have done this for years — those are the people I look up to and care about, their art, and how they've navigated and built their careers.
Your inspirations speak to the genreless music that you create. When creating a track, are you someone who writes lyrics and then creates the production afterward, or vice versa?
For me, it's always production. I am more of a producer than I am an actual singer. Singing is a means to an end, so I can be involved in producing songs and records. It's creating the production and thinking of ideas and how far we can expand our production in a song. How can I apply all of my influences and roots in different ways, or in ways I've seen some of my predecessors apply them? Because I've found a distinct way to use my voice, I can experiment in many different genres because the vocals become the through line that connects all of these different sonic worlds.
AMAARAE wears TOP, HOODIE, SHOES by DIESEL, PANTS by CLARA COLETTE MIRAMON, SUNGLASSES by OAKLEY
When you have the urge to write and pour bits of yourself on paper, what does that look like?
So many different songs have happened in different ways. I have a record on the album called “Sex, Violence, and Suicide,” and I was in my bedroom by myself, scrolling on Instagram, and I found a guitar loop on my friend's page. He was just freestyling on his guitar; I took the loop and started freestyling over it and wrote that song in five minutes versus a song like “Co-Star,” which people wouldn't guess was a really thoughtful record, in which we thought, “How can we make these lyrics fun, but also very witty?”
Then a record like “Disguise” is a cross-pollination of: what if Britney Spears did Afrobeats but then wrote great melodies, and even tapped into an artist like The Weeknd and how he would use his voice in certain ways. For me, songwriting comes in different ways, depending on the song, but what I care about every single time is writing very good lyrics. I always think if a fan is sitting and listening to the song, they should be able to pull up the lyrics on their phone while listening to the song and think to themselves, “Wow, these are really great lyrics,” or “This is a great melody, but what the fuck is she even talking about?” I pride myself on caring enough to be that detailed in the execution of the art.
And your pen game just continues to get stronger. With a track like “Co-Star,” each lyric is punchy yet playful, especially since the song is about astrology. What compelled you to write a song about signs?
I honestly didn’t start getting into astrology until I started coming to LA for work. The baseline for every conversation seemed to be, “What’s your sign?” When I wrote “Co-Star,” I didn't know much about star signs. I was just getting into it. I was having a conversation with my engineer. He said, “This girl I used to date told me to download this app called Co-star. You connect with your friends on it, and it tells you about your relationships with them and your day in detail.” A few days down the line, we were working on a song, and it was like, this would be a fire way to approach a song — writing about star signs. I don't think anyone right now has caught on to astrology being the main conversation piece of our generation. I actually read my horoscope every day. I read my family's horoscopes and my friends, but not in a way where people make it their whole personality.
What’s your favorite thing about being a Cancer?
People never have anything nice to say about Cancers. I've been gaslit to the point where I don't even know what I like about myself. I do know that we’re very emotionally intelligent and intuitive, which can also, if channeled the wrong way, be very manipulative. Fortunately, I'm one of the good Cancers. So I'm just intuitive.
AMAARAE wears DRESS by OTTOLINGER, SHOES by FANCI CLUB, LEGGINGS are STYLIST’S OWN
Astrology is so prominent in America, and having friends from all different places, when you bring up astrological signs, is there culture shock?
No, honestly. The world is so interconnected because of the internet; something that started in LA in 2020 is now a conversation in places like Ghana. Now girls in Ghana want to ask what your sign is. It's become a universal topic. It's cool that people want to know more about themselves spiritually and are hungry to connect to the universe and the people around them.
You’ve been able to experience the rippling of culture growing up in so many different places. How has that influenced your craft, and what pieces from each place have you kept with you?
I've been doing that my entire life. I was born in New York, then lived in Ghana for my formative years, then moved to Atlanta. I lived there for about four years, moved to Jersey, moved back to Ghana, and moved back to Atlanta for college. It's cool because I've been in all these places, in different eras, in culture, and in music. I’ve been able to take all the things that I love about all these periods and these different cultures and apply them sonically.
I grew up in Atlanta at a time when Southern Hip-Hop was just bubbling and making its mark. What I remember most loving about Southern Hip-Hop is the drums and how dirty and aggressive the drums were. When we were making this album, I remember saying to my producers, “I want the drums to knock every single time in your face.” It was maybe a bit more subtle and softer with how we've approached it, but the influence is dirty Southern drums.
It was the same way when I grew up in Mount Olive, New Jersey. I was at a house party, and this girl named Alexa played Britney Spears’s “Blackout" from top to bottom the whole party. That was my first experience with Britney Spears’s “Blackout.” I didn't realize it, but it was a transformative time for me regarding how I saw music, how I even viewed Britney Spears, and what she was doing as an artist because it wasn't pop. It was trance and progressive house mixed with pop, but very dirty and nothing like anyone else at the time.
I've been in Ghana in so many different eras of development. Ghana had a SoundCloud era that was an underground African rap, but it was very cloudy and spacey rap. Most people don't know about that. That’s an element that I bring into my music. Traveling and being nomadic have allowed me to expand my reach and the way I think and create music.
Since you’ve been able to call various places home and continue to travel for work, how have you established and maintained a community?
That's where the internet comes into play. When I started going to Lagos, the way that I connected with a lot of artists was through SoundCloud DMss and also Instagram. The main thing was an artist in Lagos would post a song on SoundCloud, and their friends would repost it, and it'd somehow land on my SoundCloud feed. Then I’d DM the artist, “Yo, I love this song; let's work together.” That was a big initial community builder for me in Africa.
As far as the UK and America, being on Instagram and the internet, like being in the depths of the internet, where I might like a song and follow the engineer, and through the engineer, I find out he's a producer, and find out another producer that he likes, that works with another artist who has a dope sound. That's how I discovered Stacey Adams; she's an artist from Memphis, Tennessee. She’s a crazy rapper, one of my favorite rappers of all time right now. It's also how I discovered Bear1Boss, who's another Atlanta rapper. Having community and great spaces like SoundCloud is such a great place for artists to congregate, meet, and communicate.
Also, being inquisitive, being a researcher, and going down rabbit holes. Exploring things and people you like, following them, and shouting them out. And saying, “Hey, I'm in your city; let's meet up.”
AMAARAE wears TOP, SKIRT by AREA, SHOES by FANCI CLUB
Out of your creative circle, who has supported you from the beginning and keeps supporting you?
My supporters have been some of the most unlikely people. This rapper who's huge in Ghana; his name is Medikal. He’s a local rapper and raps in the local dialect and Pidgin, and he’s the last person you would expect to like my music. He is somebody that championed me for years. Stone Boy is another Ghanaian artist who has championed me and always told me, “I think you're gonna be the first artist to bring a Grammy back home.” Also, people behind the scenes, Lawrence Burning. He used to write for The Fader and gave me so many exclusives. I remember he let me take over The Fader’s Instagram, which was a big one. Also, Amara who's a Nigerian director. She was also doing PR for a while and helped open a lot of doors for me. Kojey Radical, also my cousin, was one of the first people in England to champion and get behind me. There have been so many people that have supported me very early on.
Now, with your album, Fountain Baby, you’ll have even more supporters. Why that title?
What does a fountain do? It flows and flows and flows, and it never stops. I like to think of myself as a person who's a source of endless ideas, endless swag, endless everything, and endless blessings. It's a conscious and consistent flow state of abundance — an abundant child of God.
This album touches on many themes, from abundance to sexual fluidity, power, and spirituality, but it also possesses this sexiness to it.
I had a great muse when creating this album. They brought a lot of passion into my life, insight, and nurturing to the point where I felt so confident and Godly in my expression. I was getting that affirmation and expression of love and sexiness on a regular basis. It spilled out into the music, an understanding of how I was feeling and enjoying that feeling. I wanted to inject that into the music, not really as a calling card for people to approach me, but much more so as some type of indoctrination for people to feel that within themselves and then exude that onto others.
You represent that so beautifully and stylistically in your music videos. How do you use your music videos to further contextualize the themes and overall intention of a project?
The music videos I've done so far are a childhood dream come true. Once again, I've mentioned Janet Jackson so many times, and I'm sure she's tired. But honestly, my focal point is Janet. The way that she can express sexiness, unity, and love, but everything is so subtle and so soft and so sexy. And I think “Co-Star” has a bit of an edge. But what I wanted to come across was not too overexposed. Everything is very tasteful and very subtle, but it still hits hard. That was just me wanting to emulate Janet Jackson. “Reckless and Sweet” is a straight-up reference. I want to communicate community, love, and the subtleness of how to love in the sexiest way possible. My music videos are an homage to Janet.
As you continue to grow and evolve in your craft, are there moments where you think to yourself, “Should I keep going?”
Do I even want to keep going? This is the best question anyone has ever asked me in the entire universe. Man. When you look at the history of artists, the ones that give the most of themselves rarely ever feel reciprocation. Whether it be by fans, or the music industry itself, we're at a time now where the concept of art is very murky and muddled. Where social media used to be a tool to communicate and bypass the middleman and the execs who might have stalled the process, but I think social media has now forced people to become caricatures of what they initially wanted to represent. Are we artists who go into the studio, grind it out, make great records, and come up with great visuals? Or are we social media marketers? So the short answer to your question is, it's a daily struggle to want to keep going. because it's not an easy time in music. I find myself wanting to explore other creative options so that I can take a mental break and see where music goes. I just hope and pray that we come back to what truly matters, which is the art and artists that want to create and share with the world.
Although these thoughts swirl in your mind, your career continues to flourish, showing the world what Amaarae can accomplish. What would you say to your five-year-old self?
What would I say? What can I even say? Because I think I became what my five-year-old self wanted me to become. So maybe, “Keep believing in the shit that you think is fire because it's gonna pay off. Don't ever doubt it because it's gonna happen. A lot of people like to say shit can't happen, but not you. You're not one of them. So keep it pushing, baby.”
