Do we like Ayra Starr?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Decent and on the right side with one contested choice (the Chris Brown tour), but the record on her views is thin.
Ayra Starr is a Yoruba pop star who came up through Mavin Records and has built a global Afrobeats career. Starrgirl is her third album and, as she tells it, completes a trilogy that began with 19 & Dangerous in 2021 and The Year I Turned 21 in 2024. Her line is that she has moved from “I have to be” to being sure of who she is.
The biggest stoush on her record is one she didn't start. A fake nude image of her circulated online in November 2025, and one critic called it “digital violence”. Pulse Nigeria also reported a campaign of rumours about her body that critics called coordinated. Back in June 2025 she posted that there was nothing she could do about people who “intentionally want to bully and misunderstand me every time”.
Her own missteps are small and very online. In June 2025 she replied to a critic with “We not in the same room, babes” during national mourning for the Benue killings, and people said she hadn't read the room. She hit back about the pile-on rather than apologising. That's a PR stumble, not a character flaw.
On the harm test, honestly, the record is thin. Searches turned up nothing from her on LGBTQ+ people, women's rights, migrants, climate or vaccines, either way. That's a gap, not a clean bill of health. The one mark is that she opened for Chris Brown on his 2024 US tour. Asked about his history with Rihanna, she said she was “prepared” for criticism and would “separate my work”, and she called Rihanna her queen.
The May Global Citizen NOW remarks were about energy access. She said that growing up in Nigeria “having electricity would have made a big difference” and described her grandmother selling produce fast because there was no power to store it. Some critics said that leans on hardship stories African artists get asked for, while defenders said it's simply true. Where you land depends on whether you hear it as storytelling or as honesty.
The good stuff is mostly her work and her platform. She won Best International Act at the 2025 MOBO Awards, and she has used festival stages to talk about energy access in Africa. We couldn't verify any charity work with dated reporting, so we're leaving it out. She also says faith drives her, and faith alone is never a mark against anyone.