FEATURE:
Spotlight
Ayra Starr
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THIS is an exciting feature…
as I get to Spotlight the amazing Ayra Starr. If you have not heard of her music, then I hope that this piece will guide you her way. Her eponymous E.P. came out earlier in the year; it grabbed a lot of attention. She is definitely someone with a long and bright future in music! The first interview that I want to bring in is from NME. Among other things, we get a sense of what it was like for Starr growing up and how she got into music:
“Manifesting notoriety in her aptly-chosen moniker, Ayra Starr’s lyricism isn’t cloaked in confusing metaphors or peppered with clichés; it’s a collection of her raw, unfiltered thoughts. In her recently-released debut self-titled EP, Ayra contemplates power, freedom and pain, placing her vocals over a dynamic sound that bolsters a soulful pulse. By deploring polyrhythmic beats and Yoruba vernacular in tracks like ‘Sare’, Ayra revives West African music tradition without a nostalgic relapse.
Growing up between Nigeria and the Benin Republic, Ayra always loved music and came from “a very musical home; music brought everybody together.” But unlike many West-African teens, Ayra wasn’t forced to play it safe when it came to choosing a career but was pushed to follow her dreams. It was her mother’s words of encouragement that motivated Ayra: “My mum would always call me asking me to follow through with music”.
PHOTO CREDIT: Danielle Mbonu for Hyperbae
After initially avoiding to take music seriously, she finally caved aged 17, gleaming knowledge of her craft from the internet. “I never went for any formal training; I would just go on YouTube. It would take months to learn things, it was very challenging”. Giggling, she continues, “but I like a challenge!” Once she felt skilled enough, she started covering songs by artists like Andra Day and 2Face Idibia on her Instagram – but putting herself out there was hard at first. “I would be too scared to post my videos. I wouldn’t check it for three hours after I posted because I’d always be so scared”.
In December 2019, she posted the original song ‘Damage’ onto her page, which caught the attention of Mavin Records, the iconic Nigerian record label that has fostered the careers of Tiwa Savage, Rema and Wande Coal. It was through Don Jazzy [Mavin Records boss], who first introduced Ayra to music production. In a matter of months, Ayra went from producing covers in her bedroom to sitting in a music studio and has produced her first body of work.
Not only is Ayra grateful for the support, but she’s also glad to be a rising star during Nigeria’s era of global dominance, where artists like Burna Boy, WizKid and Davido continue to smash the international music charts. “Thank God, at last! Witnessing this motivates me to make more music because I know that not just Nigerians are listening to me now. I’m reaching people in countries I never even knew would like my music”.
There is a lot to love about Ayra Starr. She is this amazingly eclectic artist who is releasing really fantastic music! I feel that she is a role model; someone providing a lot of strength and inspiration to other women in the industry. Her eponymous E.P. is a phenomenal work that signals a rare talent. In this interview, Ayra Starr discusses the themes of the E.P. I didn’t know that she wrote songs with her brother:
“Ayra Starr – is there a meaning behind your name?
[It’s] an Arabic name that means “somebody that is highly respected.” It means woke and eye-opening and that’s what I stand for. My music is very eye-opening.
What themes and moods were you going for with your debut EP?
I tried to talk about women and people taking their power back. The last track on the EP just talks about life from a teenage point of view. [I understand teenagers] go through a phase [where] you’re partying all the time and following the wrong crowd. It’s just me explaining everything will be better. It’s just peer pressure. It’s just ageing. We can always grow from that.
Do you often write songs with your brother and are any of these songs on the EP?
Like four songs from the EP were written by me and my brother. He helps me with my words and feelings, how I want it to sound. He just generally understands. He plays the guitar and Piano [so] expect amazing songs from me and him”.
I am going to wrap up soon enough. Before then, there are a few other interviews that are of interest. DJ Booth spoke with Ayra Starr recently. The E.P. has done amazingly well. Not only has it helped bring this great artist to wider attention. Let’s hope that it helps bring more Nigerian voices to the forefront:
“The Ayra Starr EP is a bite-sized exhibition of the 19-year-old singer’s vocal and lyrical range. It explores themes of romance, self-care, nostalgia, and coming of age from the perspective of a Gen Z Nigerian woman with shrewd lyricism and unbridled expression of emotion.
Ayra wields a necessary conviction to recount phenomena from personal and adjacent experiences. “Most of the things I’ve learned are basically from watching other people experience them because I’m 18, and I’ve not really gotten to experience most of these things, but I’ve been around enough to see them happen to people around me,” she explains to Audiomack.
Your Ayra Starr EP went No. 1 in five countries and officially brought you into the limelight. A few months later, what’s been its biggest impact, in your opinion?
When I [have] people message me like, “Your EP saved my life,” that’s just the most important thing to me. I don’t know if that would feel like a great impact to other people, but to me, it is. Going No. 1 in five countries is amazing; I’m grateful for that, but are people listening to the music? Are they listening to the message? Not just dancing to it, not just feeling the vibe. And for me to know that people love the music and also understand the message, that’s amazing.
“DITR” has a message that resonates with Nigerians across generations who’ve experienced coming of age in a stifling environment. What were you thinking about when you made that song?
The normal Nigerian stereotypes and normal life; going to school and just… In other parts of the world, when people go to Uni and leave their parents’ homes, they’re allowed to be wild and explore. But in Nigeria, when people do that, it tends to spiral because there's a lot of stress in the country from the schools. People become addicted to drugs; people leave the path of where they were supposed to go and all of that. So I took that and put it into the song.
Do you think young Nigerian voices are heard enough today?
I think they’re starting to be heard, but not enough. Younger people are becoming more confident with their crafts and what they have to say. Before, it used to be, “What do you know you’re talking about? You’re too young to know,” but now everybody has something to say, and they are becoming confident enough to say it. Either through music, poetry, or how they live their lives. Younger people are becoming freer. They can color their hair the way they want because people are becoming more confident in themselves and how they want to live.
In a conservative Nigerian society infamous for policing women’s bodies, your style portrays a woman owning and confident in her sexuality. When did you decide to disregard patriarchal social constructs around appearance?
That’s where we have it wrong, ‘cause not everything is about sexuality. Sometimes I want to wear something because I feel hot and not because I want to show off my body. Not everything about women is sexual; women in this country are just over-sexualized. You breathe and it’s too sexy; you don’t breathe [and] it’s not sexy enough. I just dress the way I want to dress, the way I feel comfortable. Nobody’s mindset is going to stop me from having an independent mind and just doing what I want to do, what genuinely makes me happy as a person”.
It has been a tough last year or so for all artists. For those new hoping to gig and get out there, only now is there a bit of light and possibility. Releasing her Ayra Starr E.P. when she could not gig. That must have been pretty tough. In this interview, Starr was asked about the E.P. and its success. We also learn that she enrolled at university at a very young age:
“Amazing! It’s been a year since you started recording your EP and Ayra Starr, the project, dropped on the 21st January 2021. How is it been received so far?
It’s been amazing. I’m so grateful. Like people are going nuts. Before I came out, I would just imagine that “Oh! People might not like it”. I would just like…try to process my mind for the haters. “People are going to hate it. That’s fine. That’s fine.” But I’ve not been getting that at all. I’ve just even been seeing it. People are like, “okay, at least they like one song”. People are like, “Oh, they love the EP”, so it’s like, it’s been crazy and I’m so grateful.
Now when it comes to the lead single from the project, Away, I hear it was a freestyle you wrote when you were feeling down, you said it felt like therapy to you. You’ve also touched on the fact that you write with your younger brother, Milar. Talk us through your creation process.
I write what I feel, so sometimes I don’t have a beat to go with the melodies in my head. I can write a full song without a beat. I just have a song and I have melodies, and I’m writing lyrics and melodies. Most of the time I also write with my brother. He plays the guitar and the piano so we write together; he’s an amazing songwriter. He just knows what to say! He knows words. He knows how to articulate his feelings. So when we get to the studio [with] my producer, Loudaa, we all just vibe. Everybody does their own work. So I come up with the melodies, my brother comes up with the words, and Loudaa makes the beats. It’s like we’re just in sync with each other. There’s no like specific process, it just depends on what we are feeling.
PHOTO CREDIT: Danielle Mbonu for Hyperbae
You’re also a smarty pants! Is it true you went to university at 14 years?
[Laughs] People in Nigeria usually get to uni when they’re like 15 or 16. I just did it like, a year younger! Everyone is always like, “Oh, wow. You’re so intellectual…” [laughs] Guys. Don’t ask me. Don’t think I’m Albert Einstein or something but like I wrote my YX in SS2 – that’s like the year before my senior year. I tried it and I passed so my mum encouraged me to go to uni. I did uni. I got in at, you know, 14. I turned 15 the next week! So it’s kinda like 14-15, I just use 14 to brag a little [laughs]. So yeah, that was it sha! I was a teenager all through school. Most people in my school was like 18 like 17, and I was 14. I would never tell anyone I was 14 because they would pick on me because of my mouth. I would get into fights all the time. So just imagine [if] they knew I was 14, I would get beat up [laughs].
[Laughs] Brains and beauty. Love to see it. Now, you studied International Relations and Political Science. Do you feel like having a degree has kind of prepared you for this life in music?
Definitely. Definitely. It has really helped me. Like I said, I met lot of people in uni. So mentally I feel like I’m aware and mature in a lot of things. I’ve seen things. I’ve seen people’s experiences. And just reading, a lot of things internationally has definitely opened my eyes. I can sing about a country’s political problems and all that because I know all that. I’ve learnt and I’ve read. I’ve met a lot of people from different countries that I just know, experiences, and it really helps me.
Amen and Amen. You’ve started strong. Do you feel like there is any pressure to overperform or outperform others especially as a young female in the industry?
At all! I’m just living my life. I’m just going to do me all day and every single time, I’m going to do me because me being me got myself here. I did what I wanted to do. I sang the same music I’ve always wanted to sing so I’m just going to be me all through. I’m going to what I want to do on stage. I’m going to do me all through
In one word, can you describe want your listeners to walk away with once they listened to your music?
I want them to feel like they’ve just came out of a therapy session. When you come out of the therapy session, you feel at peace and feel more in control of yourself and you feel powerful. So, I definitely want by my listeners to feel at peace and powerful; so it’s P + P. That’s good! I’m gonna write that down [laughs] You know, I want people to feel like words that they couldn’t saym things that they couldn’t express, I’m expressing it for them. So when they listen to me, they’re like, “Oh, yes!” So I definitely want that”.
There is one more interview that I want to put in. Hyperbae spoke with Ayra Starr earlier this year. She has been bullied herself. She wants to make music to empower those who have gone through the same thing. She wants to give strength to so many different people:
“Outside of music, what other things do you love doing?
It’s between just binge-watching shows and reading books for me. I’m really a binge-watcher. I just watched a whole K-drama called Lovestruck in the City yesterday. I watched it from last night at 7 p.m. and now I’m done with it. The last book I read was The Husband’s Secret. That book was so… oh my God! (Laughs) It’s a mystery kind of… I don’t even know how to explain. It’s just such a nice book that just shocked everybody that has ever read the book.
In one word, how would you describe Ayra Starr?
I hate that number because I’m so indecisive. “One” is so annoying. I’d say “happy” is the word. I think I’m happy all the time. It annoys a lot of people, but I’m always happy. I’m just a free spirit. I think I’m that way now because when I was younger, I used to be really anxious about life and I used to be depressed and all that. Then just one day I was like, “Why? Why am I angry, why am I depressed, why am I not happy?” When I was 14, I was still trying to understand myself and the world and at that age, I was in university already. I didn’t even understand what was happening.
Their feminist views were quite prominent in their music. Do you see yourself toeing that line in terms of the messaging in your music?
When I make music, I just really like to empower people however I can. People that need empowering. If you’ve been bullied before, you’d love “Away.” If you’ve been heartbroken, you’d love “Away.” If you’re a feminist, you’d love “Away.” I just really like to empower people. The people that are not added to the equation. I just like to make everybody feel like they are one. The Lijadu Sister — what they did was so powerful, and I want to be able to do that too, not only in terms of feminism but in different aspects of life. I want people to feel like they are listening to somebody that is speaking their mind”.
If you are new to Ayra Starr, then check out her music and get behind her. I discovered her relatively recently. It has been interesting reading about her and listening to the music. I know that she will go onto great things. After her eponymous E.P. blew up and grabbed so many people, there is this demand and expectation. There is a debut album, 19 & Dangerous, on the way. I am really looking forward to that! It is going to be fantastic. Here is a salute to a young artist who…
IS going to go very far indeed.
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