Kinnie Starr
Kinnie Starr is a trusted guide and fearless explorer. Born in Calgary and based just outside Vancouver, BC, Starr is a tri-lingual (spanish, french and english)poet, pundit, speaker, songwriter/producer and beat maker. Provocateur, rapper, and singer. Her familiar and extraordinary voice provokes an evolved conversation around the contemporary politics of love, sex, media, identity and, more urgently, the misuse of fresh water here on planet earth.
The anti-star’s Starr, Kinnie has made a career out of sidestepping the star maker machinery. She creates raw, intuitive material that straddles the lines between folk, rap, art-pop and poetry, and is a name respected in almost any cultural or artistic conversation concerning hip hop, folk and pop music, art, activism and critical thinking. Starr is acknowledged as one of BC’s cultural icons by the Royal British Museum of Victoria, BC (2008). She won a Juno Award as producer for the Digging Roots album, “We Are” (2010) and has been recognized formally as a pioneer in hip hop (Manifesto Hip Hop Summit 2011, Toronto). As a visual artist, she was featured in 2013 at Vancouver’s Bill Reid Gallery as part of the show, “Rezerect”. Starr continues to produce and engineer her own material, making her one of the 5% of female producer/engineers in music worldwide.
2014/2015 is the next phase of her steady journey as an artist. With a new release coming out in October 2014, tentatively titled From Far Away, a three night stint at The Sydney Opera House in July 2014, her first cross-Canada tour in many years scheduled for fall, a dedicated boutique label on her team, and two film and television projects in development that challenge conventional media representation of women and society, Starr continues her journey as a career artist assessing the world with humour, compassion, and eagle eyed surveillance.