Ah-Mer-Ah-Su dives into the depths of her radiant new EP ‘Hopefully Limitless,’ a beautifully bold and intimately expressive alt-pop revelry.
Stream: “Fantasy” – Ah-Mer-Ah-Su
Beautifully bold and intimately expressive, Ah-Mer-Ah-Su’s new EP is a radiant revelry: A buoyant journey of self-discovery and self-love built on glistening, gilded alt-pop and an invigorating resolve to live life to the fullest, holding nothing back in the process. An artistry built on unapologetic honesty and wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve comes alive yet again with Hopefully Limitless, a record that reminds us “it’s okay to dream” as we celebrate the lives we make for ourselves.
You don’t need anyone’s permission to be happy, to enjoy yourself, to live your best life, or to smile.
when you told me you couldn’t be there for me
i frankly wasn’t surprised
i had no way of knowing where we were going
but I came along for the ride
’cause you, you don’t know who you are
and you don’t know what you want
it’s okay… it’s okay
I just won’t trust you anymore
it’s okay, it’s not okay
I just won’t trust you anymore
– “Fantasy,” Ah-Mer-Ah-Su
Released July 26, 2021 via DERO Arcade, Hopefully Limitless is utterly spellbinding: The follow-up to Ah-Mer-Ah-Su’s 2018 debut album Star and 2019’s orchestral revamp Incandescent Body finds the Oakland born, LA-based artist dwelling in pools of feel-good passion and joie de vivre, exposing the highs and lows of our everyday existence and coming out on top.
It’s a dazzling return for Bay Area-based Star Amerasu, whose music as Ah-Mer-Ah-Su (also stylized as AhMerAhSu or Ah Mer Ah Su) has constantly evolved over the past five years, redefining itself as Amerasu expands the bounds and possibilities of her work. From alternative and chamber-pop to electronica, indie rock, and beyond, Ah-Mer-Ah-Su has been a vessel of profound self-expression over the past half decade – and Hopefully Limitless is no exception.
“Star was me wanting to make a statement about identity because I felt I needed to yell to the world to respect me. I now don’t care about that at all, and I just want to be hot and love the life I’m living and live the life I love,” Amerasu tells Atwood Magazine. Identity has long been an important aspect of Amerasu’s music: As an openly black transgender woman, she uses her art to not only express her own experience and shine a light on her world, but also to create a space for everyone to connect, feel understood, and feel seen.
As she told Billboard in 2018, “Once people realize that they can identify with someone else’s experience, regardless of their differences, we will have a more diversity in the music industry, and we’ll probably be represented.”
Written largely before the COVID-19 global pandemic and recorded with producers Vice Cooler (Peaches, Stereo Total, etc.) and So Drove in Los Angeles, Hopefully Limitless showcases a different kind of vulnerability from Ah-Mer-Ah-Su – one that is free from past constraints and external pressures; free to express itself with no limits or expectations. Musically and emotionally, it is an indulgence and escape all in one.
“I wrote all the songs except ‘Fantasy’ before the pandemic was ever a thought in my head,” Amerasu explains. “I was so excited for my life, I had moved to LA in Sept of 2019 and I was ready to take La La Land by storm. I think I was so happy, but also contemplating how I got to where I was. So out came all these songs. My vision was to make something that I would want to listen to when I was chilling. I took a more relaxed approach and worked very closely with Vice to create a sound that could glide into your ears. I came up with the name (“Hopefully Limitless“) with my friend Alyha Love, a queen of the Berlin underground. I told her I needed help finding a name for the EP, that I felt hopeful and that I wanted to convey that I could do anything I wanted and I needed a name.”
I think it squarely puts me in alt pop, and hopefully I can just keep moving closer to my dream which is like a huge band, woodwind section, horns, strings, synth, live drums, guitar and a small vocal jazz ensemble! I just can’t afford it yet.
I’ve been feeling good these days
My therapist said that I’m okay
I’m gonna hold onto how it feels right now
I know that feelings dissipate
But I ain’t got no time to waste
‘Cause when it’s good, we got to go, mmm…
– “Tomorrow,” Ah-Mer-Ah-Su
“I was inspired much more by the ’80s and ’90s, and I think I was going to the beach quite a lot,” Amerasu adds, “so it became this very California Sun thing. Temperamental was this struggle I had with wanting to trust in the universe and feeling both happy with how my life was improving and that fear that it could disappear in an instant. The need to trust in something outside myself. Musically it’s very ‘let’s vibe’, whereas before I wanted to think about making music that could be played at a party.”
From the soothing, tranquil opener “Temperamental” and the shimmering, dynamic exuberance of songs like “No One” and “We Got It All,” to the cinematic outpouring “Fantasy” and captivating closer “Tomorrow,” Hopefully Limitless is exhilarating. “‘Fantasy’ was my first song that I produced first using Logic, which I taught myself over the pandemic – whereas the majority of the other songs I actually wrote using a looper pedal originally,” Amerasu says, going on to cite one of her personal lyrical highlights:
Life don’t stop no she carry’s on
tomorrow will move you right along
I gotta hold on to how I feel right now
Whether you’re drawn to the deep, pulsing grooves of the catchy and cathartic “No One,” the hypnotizing, lush wonder of “We Got It All,” or something else altogether, Ah-Mer-Ah-Su has undeniably delivered an alt-pop enchantment.
Hopefully Limitless may have by and large been written before the pandemic, but it could not come at a better time: Arriving after so much loss – lost loved ones, lost time, lost experiences – Ah-Mer-Ah-Su’s music is a beacon of light and a much-needed emotional release. As our world continues to slowly open up, she has given us a soundtrack to celebrate the everyday.
“[I hope] that we all can be connected with hope, and rather than knowing anything, it’s a hope: Something wishful but not certain, and we can live in that uncertainty and it is beautiful,” Amerasu shares. Experience the full record via our below stream, and peek inside Ah-Mer-Ah-Su’s Hopefully Limitless EP with Atwood Magazine as the artist goes track-by-track through the music and lyrics of her latest EP!
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:: stream/purchase Hopefully Limitless here ::
Stream: ‘Hopefully Limitless’ – Ah-Mer-Ah-Su
:: Inside Hopefully Limitless ::
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Temperamental
Literally I’m so up and down and I hate it, I just wanna be like everybody else.
No One
You know that mantra you have to tell at yourself when you’re in the dumps, this it that mantra.
We Got it All
Summer really couldn’t come fast enough! And then it’s gone in a flash!
Fantasy
One of my ex bf’s asked me to marry him and then when I said okay he changed his mind, and then changed it back. So I told him to fuck off and wrote this song.
Tomorrow
My fear of a bad day might come following a triumph is overcome in a song about feeling good in the moment.
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:: stream/purchase Hopefully Limitless here ::
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