Around halfway through the recording process for her second album, Fountain Baby, Amaarae remembers being in a writing camp at a studio in Accra, when one of her co-producers began playing a clattering Brazilian funk beat. “One of the other producers that was there had been reading this book on Tibetan spiritual practices, and had been telling us about it,” Amaarae says. “I remember he was high as a kite—on weed, by the way!—and then he hopped on the mic. And, I swear to God, his eyes started rolling back. He was doing these, like, Tibetan chants. And this is an African dude. So this is where it all just kind of gets a bit crazy…”
The result was “Angels in Tibet,” Fountain Baby’s exhilarating opener. Debuting last year to universal critical acclaim, it’s a dazzling showcase of the Ghanaian-American musician’s prodigious talents and her deliberately genre-bending, globe-trotting sound. You might hear snatches of a Japanese folk song one minute, and jangling punk rock guitars the next—but it’s all then filtered into sparkling, alté-inflected pop of the highest order, informed by Amaarae’s upbringing between Atlanta and Accra. (There’s also the thrilling carnality of her lyrics, all delivered in her signature feathery falsetto.) “I remember the producer started chanting, and it just changed the energy in the room,” she continues. “Then I hopped on the mic and just started to hum that first melody. It was a very spiritual experience that day, and I really tried to channel that spirit across the whole album.”
Now, she’s channeling that spirit every night: Amaarae is currently in the final stages of a European tour, before moving on to the U.S. next week. And to mark the moment, she decided to finally record a music video for “Angels in Tibet,” which has—not coincidentally—been popping off on TikTok recently. “A lot of fans have been asking for a video for a long time, so I figured, you know, it’s not gonna hurt—I might as well give it to them,” she says with a laugh. “It took a while, but we’re here, finally. And I think that’s what counts.”
Staged in the historic Los Angeles Theatre, the Yavez Anthonio-directed visual begins with the singer standing within the gilded, marble-clad interiors of the lobby, wearing a black leather corset by SEKS and a Miaou skirt, worn with Diesel boots and a Matrix-style leather coat from Namilia. Next, she’s in full Old Hollywood mode, admiring herself in a mirror while dripping in gold jewelry and wearing just a pair of white bikini bottoms under a floor-sweeping white vintage fur coat. “We wanted to keep it quite simple, just these two black and white looks,” Amaarae explains of the outfits she devised with stylist Janáe Roubleau. (The white look, it turns out, was partly inspired by the video for “Jenny From the Block”: “J.Lo has this one scene where she’s wearing this amazing chinchilla coat in the heat, and they re doing her makeup. That s the energy I wanted to give.”)
While the video came together in just two weeks, the grandiose setting had been on Amaarae’s mind from the minute she wrote the song. “I feel like when we were making this record, the idea of the music was very cinematic,” she says. “So whatever we did visually had to be just as cinematic to match up to the music.” As for shooting in the Los Angeles Theater, she notes—a little like that memory of the producer in the studio with the Tibetan chanting—there was something otherworldly to it that just felt right. “It was honestly a bit creepy,” she says. “I felt like I could sense the ghosts of performers in there. The floors are creaky, and it’s this huge, old building with multiple floors. It’s very charming and magical, but it still has a darkness to it. It felt like stepping into an enchanted palace and exploring if those ghosts still had stories to tell.” Did any of those ghosts possess her while she was delivering her imperious turn across the theater’s rooms, surrounded by dancers busting out some serious moves? “I feel like when things like that happen, you never really know, do you?” Amaarae replies, laughing.
The video feels like a fitting bookend to Amaarae’s rollercoaster year: Fountain Baby ended up being one of the most acclaimed albums of 2023, she’s playing two back-to-back sold-out shows in Brooklyn later this month, and now, even TikTok virality has come calling. (There’s also a deluxe version of the album in the pipeline, which she’s currently applying the finishing touches to.) Nothing, however, has compared to the experience of performing the record live, and seeing the way it’s resonated with fans from all across the world.
“My intention was always that I wanted it to connect with people across borders, people from different cultures, people from all walks of life,” she says of Fountain Baby. “And I think doing the shows has been a real testament to that. I go out to the merch booth every day after a show, and I just see so many different types of fans. They’re all dressed differently. They’re all very unique in their own ways. And I think that’s dope. To see so many different types of people resonating with this album, I’m very proud.” She has plenty of reason to be.
