Ayra star’s rise to fame: The origin story of one of Gen Z’s rising stars.

Simply put, Ayra Starr is a legend. She’s beautiful, talented, has wonderful fashion sense and she’s one of Nigeria’s most popular musicians. She also happens to be the celebrity crush and idol of many Nigerian and other African youth. If you clicked on this article, it’s obvious you want to know more about her. She’s famous and popular now but how did she get there? What was she like before all the fame and what’s her real name? And I’m here to answer all your questions and provide information that you didn’t even know you were looking for.

Ayra Starr is a stage name. Her real name is Oyinkansola Sarah Aderibigbe hence the audio “her name is just ordinary Sarah?!” Her friends and close family call her Oyinkan. She’s Nigerian, born here in Nigeria but she spent more than half of her life in Benin which makes her a citizen of that country as well. She comes from a family of six which comprises of her late father, her mother and her two brothers and sister.

Ayra is Arabic and can be translated in English to respected or woke. Ayra has said in an interview that those were the traits she wanted to stand for as an artist. “Starr” is just English and is coined from the fact that you know, she’s a star. She was constantly encouraged by her mum to pursue a career in music. In an interview, Ayra Starr explains that her mother would call her in school saying that it had been a while she had uploaded songs and she had dreams where Ayra was a musical sensation. She wrote a few songs and recorded them with her brother Dami who she would often follow to a recording studio. He is also a musician and a guitarist.

Ayra had a close relationship with her father. He was the one who encouraged her to at least get a degree before starting her career in music. She gained admission into Les Cours Sonou University at age fourteen and graduated with a degree in international relations and political science. Due to her age, she was picked on in school by her course mates. To cope with this, she would listen to Nicki Minaj and feel stronger. She said she would feel “like the second Nicki Minaj” after listening to them. Her dad eventually passed in 2018, and Ayra felt the loss deeply. She even sang a song as a tribute for him.

Ayra initially became a model at the age of sixteen for Quove model management before deciding to pursue a career in the music industry. Before her days of fame, Ayra would post videos of herself singing on Instagram and twitter. It was through these platforms that Don jazzy finally recognized her and sent her a Dm on twitter in 2019. They spent an entire year, 2020, working on her music and songs and finally released an eponymous EP (album with the same name as the artist who created it) in 2021 with five awesome songs making the track list. The songs which you might recognize are away, Ija, DITR, Sare, and memories.

Since then, Ayra has proceeded to rise higher and higher and we’re all witnesses to that. She has blown on every single platform and her songs are used as trending audios for TikTok videos and Instagram reels. She has bagged several awards and nominations including the Headies Viewers’ Choice award and Songwriter of the year award. And despite making a few mistakes whilst on stage, she continues to exceed our expectations every single time.

 

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