In Rotation: Amaria

Tampa isn't exactly the first city you think of when tracing the lineage of neo-soul, but Amaria is making a strong case for the Gulf Coast. She stepped into the game on New Year’s Day 2020 with a self-produced track called "Morning," and she’s been steadily building a world of her own ever since. You can hear the ancestry in her vocal stacking. She pulls from the Aaliyah and Janet Jackson playbook and filters it through the smoked-out lens of Erykah Badu. Her debut album Free Fallin' dropped in October, and the latest visual for "'Til We Meet Again" has had a chokehold on my monitors all week. The track glides. The drums sit perfectly in the pocket while a thick bassline anchors her airy background vocals. Modern R&B has a bad habit of treating background vocals as an afterthought, just slapping some cheap reverb on a single take and calling it a day. Amaria actually builds a choir out of her own voice. She layers harmonies that wrap around the primary melody. She isn't chasing quick, toxic internet moments. She writes real songs with arrangements that reward a good pair of headphones. You can trace this growth from her 2021 EP Bittersweet through her collaborations with Mac Ayres, UMI, and Destin Conrad. She always held her own next to those heavyweights, but on Free Fallin', she steps entirely into her own light. The industry is finally catching the wave. Spotify just tossed "'Til We Meet Again" up to the number two slot on their POLLEN playlist, while college radio stations from Raleigh’s WKNC to WMNF in her hometown of Tampa are keeping the record in heavy rotation. She put in four years of groundwork to get here. The harvest is right on time. Hit play down below.