Nigerian Afrobeats superstar Ayra Starr is getting her hair blow-dried when she casually mentions that she has a plane to catch in an hour.
It is less than 48 hours before release day, and our conversation has already been moved around to accommodate her recovery from surgery (the specific reason for which she has not disclosed). Somewhere between answering questions, getting ready, and preparing to travel, Starr admits she initially felt pressure to “push, push, push” before accepting that “I can’t do anything more than my body will allow me.”
There’s often plenty of chatter about whether the younger generation of pop stars has the appetite for the traditional grind of superstardom. Watching the machinery moving around the 24-year-old Nigerian singer suggests something more complicated. Despite being in recovery, Starr made time for our conversation, hosted listening parties in New York and Los Angeles, and still managed to do an early outing on the “Today” show. She has simply gotten very good at making the grind look effortless.
Starr’s third studio album, “Starrgirl,” is out today (Aug. 14), and poses some answers to questions like, What does it look like when you move to NYC, trust in yourself more, and remove the noise and expectations from yourself, your environment, and, most of all, the internet? The new collection of songs finds Starr experimenting with new sounds while keeping a foundation in the Afrobeats that brought her to global attention, and it’s her voice that is the throughline. The album is stacked with features from Zayn Malik, Leon Thomas, fellow Grammy nominee Wizkid, Kwn, Rema, Danny Ocean, Theodora, and more.
The album finds Starr at a junction in her career. Where does the Nigerian baddie go after racking up Afrobeats hits and cementing herself as a top contender in music with two Grammy nominations, touring stadiums while opening for Coldplay, and landing an upcoming debut role in the Gina Prince-Bythewood’s upcoming fantasy-adventure film “Children of Blood and Bone”? Third studio albums can often be a time for doubling down on sonic and visual identity or leaning toward a rebrand. “Starrgirl” finds Starr attempting both.
And as her sonic offering continues to expand, she still found ways to incorporate her Nigerian culture through the traditional Yoruba gele head wrap worn on the album’s cover art. Geles are typically worn at celebratory events, and Starr and photographer Axle Jozeph transform it into an Afrofuturist icon alongside sci-fi lasers. The choice shows that Starr’s evolution doesn’t require leaving her Nigerian identity behind. Instead, she is taking something traditional and pushing it into a new, futuristic context.
The move to New York was a catalyst for much of the change that was to come for Starr. Now, she only asks that listeners approach it with “a clean mind” and allow themselves “45 minutes of enjoyment.”
The last time we spoke, you told me that experience had taught you to become more patient with yourself. Two years later, do you feel like that has proven true?
Yes, definitely proven to be true. Because I’m so much more patient with my journey, even than I was before.
It’s easy to have these really high expectations of how things are supposed to be, and then you realize you didn’t really get to experience the moment, instead of living it.
At the same time, I feel like the internet and people do have a way of making you take your eyes off your own road. And if you believe the pressure and what they think your journey should be – you have to know yourself to know that this is not what you want.
Who is “Starrgirl”? Is she different from Ayra Starr? Is this an alter ego?
I feel like I was a different person in New York than I was in any part of the world, and I just liked who I was. I liked going to parties with my friends, waking up around like noon [laughs]. I was acting my age. I’m living my age. I just liked experiencing life, and it wasn’t just about work, work, work. It was about enjoying all the work I’ve done and just allowing myself to be, you know? And seeing myself from the lens of complete, and “I am,” instead of “I have to be.”
And that’s what “Starrgirl” is. It’s not really an alter ego, but it’s a part of me that already is complete, does not have to perform, does not have to be.
Because being a Black girl and an African girl, we grew up with, “You have to be this.” There’s a certain type of anxiety that is deep, layers, layers, layers, layers within you, that you just feel like you have to unlearn. But when you remove yourself from that and go deep, deep you start to understand that you don’t need to be anything other than what you already are.
Have you noticed any changes in your POV or relationship with yourself and music since moving to New York?
This is my first time living alone. I’m spending a lot of time with myself, you know? I started to question things that I didn’t understand, I didn’t like. But I started to understand, “I don’t like being this. I don’t like doing this. Why do I have to do it? Who says I must?” You know? Things like that. And it starts to make you create from another output in life. You change your view on life.
Let’s discuss the purple gele on the album cover. Your fans have been attending the events in gele. There’s this unusual take on Afrofuturism going on. When bringing that vision to life, what were the conversations between you and your creative visual team?
I remember I had just gotten back from Lagos. And before the shoot, I was seeing a lot of ideas. When you grow up — especially, I started music so young — you grow up with a lot of opinions over your life and over your career and what you should be doing. A lot of comparisons and a lot of direction from people that have never been in your path.
The gele conversation was the day before the shoot. Literally a day before the shoot, I texted, I called everybody: “I want to wear a gele.” They were like, “What?”
I wanted to do something I’ve seen all my life. want girls from my state to see themselves in me. So I was like, okay, I want to add a gele to this because I feel like that’s the only thing I need to tie this together. We couldn’t find a gele artist, so one of the producer’s moms or aunties had to come and help tie it [laughs].
Thinking about the project sonically you really expanded the type of sounds that you were experimenting with. “Amazing” with Kwn, is probably the furthest departure from Afrobeats that you’ve ever done. When you listened to it back for the first time, did you go, “Wow, this is some new shit?”
Oh, definitely. I feel like when I made “Amazing,” it was one of those songs that was early [in the recording process]. And I didn’t understand where I was going, but I just knew I was going. People might not see the complete vision. But I just know I’m going somewhere, so let me land. I kept telling people, “Let me cook. Let me cook.”
In our last conversation you talked about having a vocal producer come in and really instruct you on how to emote and hit certain notes. How confident do you feel in terms of your vocal ability and vocal production now?
I got to be in the studio alone with just an engineer for the first time in a long time, since my first album. I was not with a lot of producers. After we made a demo, I would go back and record in a safe space. And I got to work with an engineer that just made me feel very comfortable, you know? I’d go from my house, I would dress up, wear heels. I was going to a nine-to-five. Go to the studio, have my blanket, have my shot of tequila, you know? That made me master it, and I became very free. You can hear a lot of personality in certain takes because I was having fun.
The making of this album was very, very fun for me.
You supported Coldplay on their “Music of the Spheres” tour. How did it feel interacting with an audience that’s so different from yours, but yet they still connect with your music?
Coldplay fans came to see Coldplay. Ayra Starr is opening. They’re getting to know Ayra Starr. So there’s no entitlement attached. There’s no expectations. It’s just me being an artist and entertaining them before Coldplay comes on. Mentally, it was quite a journey. After every performance, I’d go outside and watch Coldplay. [I realized] it wasn’t even about Coldplay. For Coldplay, it was about the audience.
You’ve now racked up two Grammy nominations. How does it feel going through that process and receiving that recognition, especially with the Best African Music Performance category only being three years old and you’ve gotten two nominations?
It’s crazy, right? Because I feel like anytime it happens, I’m just like, “Ayee.” I’ve come a long way, you know? Coming from where I come from, getting nominated for a Grammy is crazy. I’m lowkey pushing the goalpost. So even being there and being in that environment with all these great artists and allowing myself to experience that, it’s enough.