THE ANGEL YOU DON'T KNOW

the take

After being recommended by my friend to check out Amaarae's "Fountain Baby" album, I've been kind of all over the place in her discography. I listened to her "BLACK STAR" album before "THE ANGEL YOU DON'T KNOW", but reviewed this one first. I actually enjoyed "THE ANGEL YOU DON'T KNOW", which is kind of surprising because I didn't think it'd leave a strong enough impression on me. Amaarae was still trying to find her unique sound at this time, and the material on here directly represent as such. Still, she succeeds in creating great tracks that are still good during that spot in her career, while experimenting and seeing early signs of her career development musically. There isn't much of the Alté/Afrobeats sound on here in comparison to later work, but there still are noticeable traces of it, such as "FEEL A WAY" and "SAD, U BROKE MY HEART". The thing is, though, the album ends up sounding a bit predictable after listening for a while, which made me kind of lose slight interest at certain points throughout, but nothing too crazy to make me just outright turn it off. That still makes for a great project, one that's at the least consistent if nothing else. As an official debut album, this is solid. P.S. "HELLZ ANGEL" might be the best song in Amaarae's discography (so far).