Starrgirl

Having been a star since at least 2021’s 19 & Dangerous, Ayra Starr uses her third album—and its title—to affirm her place among the inventive talents in Afropop. Her indelible voice—a conversational hum in one instance, a persuasive falsetto in another—remains the draw, her songwriting ability extending to phrasing, timbre and instinctive vocal displays. “Feels good to be who I am/I no pray for another life,” Starr sings on “Dance”. She’s known who she was an artist from the beginning, but Starrgirl is a chance to deepen the lore. Piano, bass and crashing cymbals build into a full-band crescendo in “Letter to God”, where Starr writes to God about a love she regards as precarious yet worth protecting. UK pop star ZAYN guests on “Heaven Baby”, a classic piano-led duet stripped of percussion and buoyed by the rich contrast of Starr’s voice and ZAYN’s soothing falsetto, which turns instant attraction—“You had me at hello”—into a celestial fantasy. In “Amazing”, Starr and guest kwn turn mutual attraction into an uninhibited late-night encounter. “Nothing but smoke and perfume in the room,” she sings, her voice treated to sound guitar-like while an actual guitar traces her melodies across a languid, trap beat. “We don’t talk, we dance,” goes the instruction on “Midnight in New York”, over a heaving, dance beat. Time and again, across rhythm and desire, Starr returns to the same declaration made on “Dance”: “Feels good to be who I am.”