Ayra Starr is well on her way to becoming one of the best things to happen to Nigerian Music. Recently, she became the only African artist to surpass 500m streams this year with Santa. There’s many things interesting about her right now, but what sticks with me is how she is forging a story for herself about how she’s one of Africa’s biggest and best entertainers ever.
Ayra has been on a world tour with Coldplay and had performances in several continents. She’s also gone on a world tour with Chris Brown, having two world tours to her name this year alone.
What’s more interesting is that she’s breaking boundaries in every aspect of her music. Her single Rush recently earned a billion streams worldwide yesterday, and she became the only African artist to surpass 500 million streams this year with her Santa release. She’s winning everywhere.
She’s also established herself as one of the finest performes on ground in African music. We’ve seen generational performers in Afrobeats. The Burna Boys, Wizkids, Remas, Patorankings, DBanjs, Wande Coals, Terry Apalas, Rugers and others. Ayra Starr belongs on this list, easily. In fact, I’ve decided to convince myself that the only reason Ayra Starr isn’t a regular in these conversations is because the industry isn’t so used to a female artist being the biggest thing in the space.
With 26 million monthly listeners, a successful sophomore album, two successful world tours, a song with over 500 million streams in a year and a single hitting a billion streams, and potential Grammy nominations on the way, one can only imagine the hype such artist would command if he was a male.
It’s why it’s so surprising to see that she’s being left out of global major awards this year. She missed out on a Grammy nomination and more recently the Billboard Music Awards. In the Best Afrobeats song category, Tyla had two nominations, Tems had one and our star girl had 0. This sparked a conversation on X, and it ended with fans saying Tyla keeps robbing Ayra of her placements due to the fact that their brands are similar and they have a similar target audience.
The rivalry between the fan bases of the two women isn’t new, and is very serious on social media. Many believe Tyla is an industry plant riding on the template Ayra laid. Due to the similarities in their appearances, style, branding, stage performances and more, the fanbases are always at war. Though the artists seem to be really cool with each other, one can only imagine how solid the foundation of their friendship is and if they would start to see each other as competition along the line.
In similar fashion to their references, one came into the industry before the other, one set a template and then one had a big moment to catch up with her peers. In most cases, the war is always between the artists. Like Bnxn and Ruger, Burna and Davido, and the likes. Since Wizkid and Davido, we haven’t really had a situation where the fanbases were the ones at war. This increases the life span and authenticity of the rivalry as no fan base would be willing to be seen as inferior.
Though rivalry sells and helps in the long run, it would be sad to think that the next serious rivalry between fans would be in the female music industry. Now that the women are dominating and getting all the attention, it would be a waste of time and effort to channel all that success into beef. It also doesn’t help that one is Nigerian and one is South African, as this could escalate the silent war and loud xenophobia between the two countries.
Ayra, Tyla and Tems are pushing the conversation that female artists can be as big as their male counterparts in the African music space, and long may it continue. There’s more to be done. We can do better than fighting. In fact, we can share the grace together, in fellowship.
