Ama Serwah Genfi, known professionally as Amaarae, is a Ghanaian American singer, songwriter, producer, and engineer known for her groundbreaking work around representation and gender in music. After collaborating with artistes like AYLØ, Kay-Ara, Yaw P and putting out a few non-album singles, she released her debut 6 track EP, Passionfruit Summers in 2017. The album features the standout song, "Fluid", which was complemented by a music video that featured Ghanaian men in drag. Amaarae has since added Stonebwoy, Kojey Radical, , Santi, Odunsi, B4bonah and very recently, in 2019, the Nigerian Singer-songwriter Wande Coal to the list of artists she has worked with.
Early life
Ama Serwah Genfi was born on July 4, 1994, in New York and raised between Atlanta and Accra to Ghanaian Parents Ama Bawuah and Kwadwo Boateng Genfi. She is the elder of two children. Amaarae began to experiment with music at the age of 13, when she wrote her first song. In an interview with , she said "I wrote my first song when I was about 13 and it was a reimagining of R.Kelly and Usher’s "Same Girl". During high school she started making mixtapes and by 17, she took up an internship at a music studio. At university, she undertook voice training and honed her song writing skills while studying English literature and in June 2017 she returned to Ghana.
Career
Recognized both locally and internationally, she was named one of Apple Music Africa's Favourite New Artist in April 2018 and later that year became an Apple Music Beats 1 featured artist for her debut project Passionfruit Summers which she released through her independent record label, Golden Child LLC on November 30, 2017. She performed with Teni, Boj of DRB LasGidi and Odunsi at ART X Lagos, an art fair in Lagos, Nigeria on November 3, 2018. Amaarae has also been acknowledged for her style and fashion sense. In 2018, she was featured in Vogue Magazine online in an article on 4 women across the globe with buzz haircuts and snagged a mention as one of Vogue online's Top 100 Style Influencers of 2018, in addition to being nominated as Artist of the Year at the Glitz Style Awards in Ghana. She has also patronized Ghanaian fashion brand Free The Youth. On March 23, 2019, Amaarae became one of the acts chosen to perform at the first-ever Boiler Room event to happen in Accra, Ghana alongside La Meme Gang and Award Winning Rapper Kwesi Arthur. In October 2019, Amaarae penned and unprecedented op-ed for Okayafricaconsisting ofshort stories that contextualised her experience as a female musician in male-dominated landscape, entitled . These included "Thank God Herself", "Why Do You Hate Me?", and "A Conversation with Alexis" which would precede the latest of her non-album singles "Like It."
