Amaarae – S.M.O.

Skipping ahead in the series to “Slut Me Out [8]”…

[Video]
[8.20]

Hannah Jocelyn: How is this not the biggest hit in the entire world? “S.M.O.” reminds me a bit of Jim Legxcy in its freewheeling fusion of genres. Amaarae mentions five different artists in the press release, including ’80s Janet Jackson and Ghanaian highlife pioneer Ata Kak, and it’s possible to hear everything she’s talking about on this single song. The lo-fi 909 drums and orchestral hits are treated as if they’re expensive ear candy (expensive sounding-sounds, if you’ll allow a decade-old reference), and it would feel disjointed if it wasn’t clearly mixed by someone — Leandro “Dro” Hidalgo, who mixed Tyla’s “Water”– who knows what they’re doing. But everyone here clearly does, especially Amaarae.
[10]

Joshua Minsoo Kim: Takes gqom as its base and gives its dark, moody synths an ’80s Janet Jackson flair. The commitment to pop-song structure means the repetition and austerity of that South African dance music mutates into something closer to zouk (I don’t really hear highlife or zouglou, which Amaarae cites). A bright, flashy, confident piece of music that stands as one of the most thrilling pan-global pop songs of the year.
[8]

Julian Axelrod: Many a pop girlie is currently cribbing from Janet Jackson, including today’s two other subjects. But while Addison Rae draws on the aqueous ambience of The Velvet Rope and Sabrina Carpenter emulates the gleeful flirtation of All for You, only Amaarae has the vision and presence to pull off the leather-dom fantasy of Control and Rhythm Nation 1841. Her coo is one of the most deceptively versatile instruments in modern pop, capable of coy come-ons and ominous incantations within the same breath. And in the spirit of her predecessor, every second of “S.M.O.” feels deeply, deliriously horny, to the extent that I can’t make eye contact with anyone while listening to it in public. Amaarae cites highlife icon Ata Kak as an inspiration for the track, but the charm of Ata Kak’s Obaa Sima lies in the contrast between his passionate loverboy pleas and his cheap tinny synths, suggesting a man with nothing to give but his undying affection. “S.M.O.” offers the inverse: With a beat this expensive and basslines this nasty, how could Amaarae possibly need you?
[9]

Iain Mew: “S.M.O.” works an impressive flexibility and makes it sound like no big deal; Amaarae’s vocal is elastic enough to ride every change and more. The song pulls off two incredible flexes late on where the synths take it sharply in a new direction, but those are nothing compared to her turn to “it’ll make me cry.”
[8]

Jel Bugle: I find Amaarae’s vocals a little too wispy,  and this song is too long and one-level. It gets a bit more interesting toward the end.
[6]

Alfred Soto: The anonymity of Amaarae’s chalky tone is part of its excellence: some of the most fervid dance music of the last 40 years relies on an Everyperson blankness. Besides, “S.M.O.” has enough whistles, synth horn stabs, and bass thwacks to compensate.
[8]

William John: A simmering pot that never quite reaches its boiling point, perhaps intentionally. “S.M.O.” has an insatiable narrator, but one who is keen to emphasise that even vulgar pleasures don’t come as quick and fast as the shock of an orchestra hit; sensuality is the reward for perseverance, perhaps exemplified by the way the track ultimately relents to various deep grooves. I’m not sure if this is the first queer Afropop song about gooning, but hopefully it isn’t the last.
[8]

Claire Davidson: The bold zaps of synthesizers and expressive percussion do construct the foundation of a good groove, but a song whose title is an acronym for the phrase “slut me out” should be far more brash than this.
[6]

Ian Mathers: Exciting to see that the NLE Choppa Cinematic Universe clearly realizes that you can’t just do the same thing over and over if you want to keep the audience involved. You have to set up different tones, stories, and characters so that when your Endgame equivalent hits (“Slut Me Out 27” or what have you), it really hits.
[7]

Katherine St. Asaph: Infinitesimal nitpick: “She taste like Lexapro” is one of those metaphors that’s evocative until you realize that wait, Lexapro is an actual substance, you can actually taste it, and it tastes terrible. This does not affect my score, which will undoubtedly become a [10] under the correct nocturnal conditions.
[9]

Nortey Dowuona: me to BNYX
[10]

Tim de Reuse: A relentless wave of clicks, orchestra hits, whistles hits every sixteenth-beat, a Sega Genesis-ass bassline, vocal processing that puts her ever so slightly into chipmunk range: a sonic mess buoyed by lyrics that bounce haphazardly between desire-metaphor and direct references to sexual acts. The horniest thing I’ve heard in years.
[8]

Mark Sinker: Back in the ancient days, when we bookish pop knowers first encountered Roland Barthes’ S/Z, we would seize on works and demand interventionist projects that “jumbled the codes.” Had I left myself time, I could maybe have turned in a many-paragraph Barthes-style blurb, with all the focused density of his close-reading passions and hunches, to deep-dive into this glidingly strong example of the codes out on the spree, wrangling and dancing and, well, you know. Who’s who, who’s doing what to who, via the words and the delivery of course — and the grunts and the gasps and the kiddie-toy delivery of “scream and shout” — but far more than this how the arrangement and synth-settings, the layers and the beat either firm up the tale or flip open wild portals, or else dreamily dissolve it all. Not just the purpose, but the veritable meaning (I mean like all of it) of dropping the title into initials. Every wriggle of it, exhaustively. Plus I could even take a moment to remind everyone (me most of all) what “proairetic” means. However, I did not leave myself time. 
[9]

Jacob Sujin Kuppermann: On her last album, Amaarae floated, an almost-spectral presence lingering above amorphous productions. There were genius moments in her melodies, but the overall effect was diffuse; an ambient collage rather than a highlight reel. “S.M.O.” is instead taut and exciting, the bass a coiled snake lurking in the grass. There’s nothing airy or ethereal about her here (this is the first Amaarae song to even slightly resemble a jock jam). By the time she starts rapping about breaking out Hennessy and wanting “to meet the god that made you” — slick! ominous! — the song’s logic makes it make sense. This is a banger in all possible ways, a truly masterful performance from one of the great pop stylists of our time.
[9]

Will Adams: Achievement unlocked: Song Of The Summer.
[8]