Consumer Guide Album

Amaarae: The Angel You Don't Know [Golden Child, 2020]
Born Ama Serwah Genfi to Ghanaian parents in the Bronx 28 years ago, based variously in a New Jersey suburb, Atlanta, London, and Accra, Amaarae has been a professional musician for over a decade. Making the most of a breathy soprano that mixes chants, trills, and murmurs into what comes down to her own style of rapping, she registers sex-positive rather than sex-obsessed because she makes a convincing show of calling her own shots, although exactly how that applies to the "Sad Girlz Love Money" capper is a trickier question. Sonic innocence meets verbal candor in a cutesy amalgam that would have been shocking just a decade ago. B+