Kinnie Starr's Crisis of Identity
Canadian Hip Hop Artist Wants to Focus on the Music, Not Her Race
Kinnie Starr has spent much of her career discussing her identity as an Aboriginal musician. Working on her 5th album, she'd like to talk about the music for once.
If there’s one thing musician Kinnie Starr is sick of, it’s labels.
“I’ve been called an Aboriginal MC, a singer/songstress, a ‘bisexual poet,’” she says. “If I was stupid enough to believe what people wrote about me, I’d be really confused.”
It’s not surprising that people have had trouble classifying the MC/singer/producer. Though she’s released several albums of pop-tinged hip hop, Starr is far from a conventional MC.
The problem of categorization has been one that has plagued her professional career.
“I think my music can be hard to categorize,” she says. “I’m primarily an MC but my music isn’t straight up hip hop, either. I don’t understand why people think it’s so left of centre, but you know, who knows? With stuff like that, it’s underground music judged by overground committees.”
The mix of influence has perhaps kept her out of the mainstream in some ways, but she’s not bothered. A strong presence in the underground music scene for a decade, Starr isn’t looking for the big time.
“I’m happy where I am,” she says. “I earn a living off making art but I don’t have to deal with fame.”
While Starr’s heart does lie primarily in MCing, her music spans genre quite masterfully, combining pop beats and electronica with hip hop, singing as well as rapping on many of the tracks.
Not content to be the front for someone else’s words, Starr writes, produces, mixes, and performs all of her material. She attributes the diversity of her sound in part to her disregard for conventions.
“I throw manuals out,” she says. “It’s a strength and a weakness. The music I produce is often quite unconventional, because I sort of feel along. But when something goes wrong, I can’t fix it.” At the time of this interview, her forthcoming album was stuck in her mixer.
Starr will expand her musical horizons further with that unreachable album. She released her fourth album Anything on Maple Music Recordings in 2006, but even before that album was released she was working hard on the new album, a collection of indie folk rock songs — a departure from her traditionally urban sound.
“I think it might be nice to just be a white rocker chick for a while.”
That’s where the problem of labeling begins again. Starr, of European and Mohawk descent, has spent as much time talking to the press about her race as she has talking about her music. She says the connection has sometimes been important.
“It’s important to be visible as a Native, to stand up and be proud of it,” she says. “My dad wasn’t. When he was young, if you could pass as Italian or something, you did. So for young Natives to see someone getting somewhere as a Native — that’s good.”
At the same time, she’s surprised by how much press is devoted to the fact that she’s half Mohawk, and how being part Mohawk has affected her writing.
“On my new record, there’s maybe 4 lines about being Aboriginal,” she says. “Who I am as a person definitely affects what I do…race is important, but it’s not the only thing. I write about my life, and race is only a part of that.”
When asked about how her European heritage has affected her writing, she laughs. “Thank you. No one has ever asked me that before.”
Starr is far more interested in talking about the music itself as opposed to which part of her genetic make-up helped to create it.
“When the music’s good, people don’t care what your gender is or what colour you are. It’s about the songs.”
