ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT
Kinnie’s lyrics star tampons, body image
By Ash Wittig
Gazette Staff
 |
Gazette File Photo |
| KINNIE
HAS STARR QUALITY. Kinnie is ready to entertain London tomorrow night,
offering some “head-nodding pop with a fresh sexy hop.” |
Vancouver-born Kinnie Starr, known for her rad rhyming abilities, describes
her new album as “head-nodding pop with a fresh sexy hop.”
Sun Again, Starr’s third album, dabbles in genres including hip-hop,
trip-hop, punk and R&B; however, Sun Again is her first album entirely
in English.
In the past, Starr has been known to include in her lyrics anything that rubs
her the wrong way. She’s spoken out about issues from body image and
racial prejudice to the unhealthy side effects of tampons. Somewhat of a nouveau
Nelly Furtado, Starr could freestyle her way out of anything.
Recently, however, she has recreated her sound to be a more mellowed- out
groove with looser-sounding rhythms. “I’m deeply in love right
now and I think you can really tell by listening to this album,” she
says. “I think I also came into my own sound and I really learned how
to write songs.”
This past year, Starr was in Las Vegas for six months practicing with Cirque
de Soleil’s sexy Vegas show, Zumanity. However, she left due to creative
differences; the show had taken on a gospel-esque, traditional “cirque” style
that failed to feature Starr’s talents.
Starr says she was able to get out of her contract without a problem. “It
wasn’t a very good fit,” she notes. “As a result, I learned
some skills that I didn’t know before and I learned how much I would
prefer to be in Canada.”
In addition to music, Starr creates visual art. She takes inspiration from
almost anything, but explains why it’s better to be a rural artist.
“Being rural or at least ‘small urban’ creates more sparks
of creativity for me. I’ll see a bird’s nest unprotected in the
winter time and it will just create this pop of inspiration for me. I think,
too, that artists will get an idea at really weird times — sometimes
I’ll wake up at four in the morning with all these ideas running through
my head.”
Starr has her share of influences as well, both musically and personally. “History
really affects the way I see the world,” she says. “I’m really
aware of how little we’ve been taught. The personal by-product of this
is that I feel the sting of that in my family. They are unaware of how it is
to have Native roots. I look at the work I produce and it’s often drawn
from those roots.”
Starr is one quarter Aboriginal, and you can often hear her lyrics alluding
to this fact in her albums.
If you’ve seen any episodes of the new series The L Word, chances are
you’ve heard Starr’s music as well. “The music editor was
and is a fan of my work; she placed some of my songs in the series and I’m
really grateful,” she says, adding she also has some songs appearing
in the film Thirteen.
Not only does Starr’s music appear in television shows and movies, she
also co-stars in an indie film directed by Kurt Voss titled Down and Out With
the Paper Dolls, a film about the rise and fall of an all-girl rock band.
Starr’s music is quite varied, so it’s difficult to say where
she stands in today’s music industry. “It’s not about the
music I play but more about whether or not I have the perseverance. I think
what I’m doing is truly valid. I just know that the work that I and a
lot of my peers do is very culturally significant.”
Although Starr has many things to say on a number of different topics, the
message in her music is pure and simple: “Positivity and respect for
yourself. I want to inspire inquisition.”
Kinnie Starr hits London’s Elements Lounge tomorrow, Feb. 19.
