Love takes center stage on Amari Noelle’s debut project, which she added to over time before landing on the final 16 songs. The Gary, Indiana, native makes soulful R&B that aims to embrace tenderness and vulnerability rather than run from it at the first sign of trouble—a pattern she’s noted with younger generations. “With my music, I’m just trying to bring back the love essence,” she tells Apple Music. “No matter if your relationship is with your boyfriend, your girlfriend, or within your family, I’m just ushering back in that love because I feel like it got lost somewhere along the way, and I feel like that’s just my responsibility.” Recorded with only an iPhone and headphones, Amari’ SZN 1 has a sensual, nocturnal quality to it. The lyrics encompass different seasons of her life and the ways in which she has experienced the ups and downs of romance. Together, the songs function as a portrait of the singer-songwriter (and former rapper), filtered through the lens of love. “It’s really just an introductory tape,” she says. “You’re getting to know Amari and everything that comes with Amari.” Below, she explains the inspiration for each of the tracks. “Hyatt” “It’s big and it tallies, to me, what all the tape is about. Not only do I talk about the things that’s going on within my life, but it centers around love. I wrote it, actually, in the airport in D.C. My manager [told me] you just need to, like, expand more and talk about a little more. That was my interpretation of bringing it all together. Of course, I had to add a love story in there, but ‘Hyatt’ was just a big record. I feel like it [had to go] either in the beginning or nowhere else.” “Starting Something” “I’m from Gary, Indiana—shout-out to the greatest entertainer, Michael Jackson, rest his soul. I listen to a lot of old music, and when I heard that beat, that’s what I heard. But with that song, I wasn’t really in a relationship. I was just manifesting my potential girl, my future girl. When I meet her, the vibe’s going to be there, and let’s just start. Let’s not wait—let’s just start something. That was the whole idea.” “Lover Girl” “That’s the anthem. That’s what they say that I am—I’m a lover girl. It’s just something fun that people can turn up to. I just want to stretch it—don’t want to have a whole bunch of slow songs. ‘Lover Girl’ came about because that’s who I am, and I just wanted to describe what that meant.” “Drinks On Me” “This was another song that I envisioned myself—I’m kinda shy, so I feel like when you at the club or something, the easiest way to get a girl is drinks on you. You come, you pull up to her, you like, ‘What you drinking?’ It was just like that, and I wanted to tell a mini-story within it.” “Motion” “With ‘Motion,’ I wanted a summer song. I wrote it last summer with my producer—her name is Diamond. We was just at the beach, and that was what I envisioned in my head when we came back to her crib. I was like, ‘I need a song that feels big and sounds like a movie.’ Hence the beginning—it’s like a mini-movie, and then it opens into something head-bobbing. I imagine myself in LA, and I’m riding with the top down with my shorty, and we just having fun. We ain’t worried about nothing else—we putting it in motion.” “I Want You” “‘I Want You’ was produced by Omar Grant—he’s based in LA as well. He added the beat to the vault, and it was late night. Obviously, it’s a lot of stuff that’s on your mind at the late night, and that was just what was on my mind. I needed a sexy song, man, so that’s what came. It’s just like you ain’t got to wait—I want you, so come over so we can do what we need to do.” “Heartfelt Evenings” “Somebody that I was dating [in college]—we was in a long-distance relationship, and sometimes with a long-distance relationship, you can’t see them all the time, so it was just, like, we need one of these. Sometimes you be at war because of the distance, and all you really need is a heartfelt evening. I feel like you’re my person—that’s what I was saying at the moment. I guess the world got that, but it was really for the person, and it was just something I wanted to be relatable. I’d actually made it for cuffing season, but I realized that cuffing season is every season.” “Easy” “I was having a lot of conversations with my friends, and I was at my granddaddy house, and I was just in the basement, and I heard that beat. That was just one of those beats where I was able to have a word-vomit. My feelings just came out, and sometimes I feel like everybody don’t understand me, but the beat do, and that beat just understood me and it did what it needed to do. I wanted to tell a story that I had never heard before—just being vulnerable and being honest because, at the end of the day, only you and your person know how much y’all want to take.” “Freaks” “Sitting on the couch at the crib at my mama house, I had to secretly record it—you know how mamas be. I just wanted a fun song. Sometimes, I can get in those moments where I can only appeal to myself, and I like a lot of slow ballads and everything like that. I wanted to make a song where I could be played in the clubs or be played at the pool parties, and that’s how that came out. I wanted to just talk my stuff, be on my rapper shit for a minute.” “Green in Her Eyes” “It was a YouTube beat I found. I’m like a serial manifester, and I know one day that I’m going to be in a position where I’m going to get around girls and all of them not going to be loving me for me. Some girls gonna see the dollar signs, and I think that I see people very good, so I just want to assure the females that just because I talk about love, I’m not a sucker. I can see. I felt like that was another relatable song that everybody, to me, when they get in those higher positions, they go through.” “Life” “Shout-out to J.R. [McKee] because I didn’t like that song at first. When it came on, he just made me like it because it was just a different perspective. That was a song, when I heard the beat, I knew I couldn’t BS it. I knew that it had to be about something deep. I went back to my old apartment that I grew up in, and I just stared at the window that I used to look out when I was a little girl, and to me, I feel like she wrote it. Before music, I thought that I was going to be a basketball player. I went to school on scholarship for basketball, but I ended up getting kicked off—that’s why I say, ‘Coach P lost his star’ or whatever. Then, from there, I feel like life really hit me, so it was just a mash-up of all those things I was going through, plus my little-girl stuff.” “Blue Lights” “With that song, it was another one of those days I was sitting with my producer, Diamond, and she kept playing one of the chords, the bassline. I told her, ‘Just keep adding to that.’ We was in the basement, where there was no scenery, so I asked her if she could turn on her light, and it just so happened to be a blue light. To me, blue is a deep color, so I was like, ‘Well, let me just play on that. That’s how you make me feel—blue lights in the basement.’” “Mood (Say My Name)” “That’s just another one of them sexy songs.” “Unusual” “Another smash, another sexy song.” “Glow” “‘Glow,’ to me, that’s my stadium song. One day, I hope to perform that in a stadium. I feel like a lot of people—we live in a social media age where that’s all they pay attention to, and they don’t take that moment to just accept or bask in their inner glow, so that’s what that song is about.” “Choose Luv” “I feel like I was born a lover girl, but sometimes you go through things in love that makes you not want to love no more. Then you meet a person, and they make you want to choose love. So, that was my take on that.”