After moving to Vancouver, Starr formed her first band in 1992. According to legend, the true extent of her talent was first revealed on trip to New York City, when a friend pushed her onstage at an East Village club's open-mic night, where her impromptu spoken-word poetry met an enthusiastic reception.
Career
Following a self-released demo called Learning 2 Cook in 1995, she released her debut album Tidy in 1996, mixing rock, punk, pop, and hip-hop, along with her trademark spoken-word poetry. On that album, she rapped in three languages: English, Spanish, and French.
Starr signed to major label group Island/Def Jam in 1997, following a massive bidding war during which Clive Davis personally flew out to dine the young artist to try and sign her to his roster of pop stars.[2] The next year, Seagram bought Polygram, the parent company of Island Def Jam, and merged it into Universal Music Group. In the resulting upheaval, Starr felt she was lost in the shuffle and she asked to be released from her contract. The material she recorded for her first album with Island Def Jam, 1998's Mending was never released, though some record labels have talked of releasing the lost album.
In 1997, Starr appeared on the Lilith Fair tour. In the late '90s and in 2004, she toured Canada with Veda Hille and Oh Susanna as part of the "Scrappy Bitch Tour".[3]
She performed in November 2000 at Lee's Palace in Toronto.[4]
Cirque du Soleil pursued Starr to sing in their productions, and in 2003 she contracted with them to perform in Zumanity for two years. After releasing her 2003 album Sun Again, she moved to Las Vegas. However, she was back home in Canada by the following year, where she continued to perform and record.
Her 2013 album "Kiss It" was made available to fans at Vancouver’s Queer Arts Festival one week before the official release.[5]
Her 2018 album, Feed the Fire explores finding one's truest self amidst the digital chaos of the 21st century.[6]
Starr's songs have been included on the soundtracks for the TV series The L Word and the movie Thirteen.
In 2001, Starr co-starred in Down and Out with the Dolls, a Kurt Voss movie about a fictional all-girl rock band.
Starr conceived of, and co-produced, the 2016 documentary Play Your Gender,[7] which explores the gender gap in the music industry, asking why only 5% of professional music producers are female. Produced by Sahar Yousefi and directed by Stephanie Clattenburg, the film premiered at the Canberra International Film Festival in Australia.[8] At the 2017 Melbourne Documentary Film Festival the film was awarded "Best Music / Art Documentary" (in a tie).[9] In 2018, the film was screened at the Reeperbahn Festival as part of the "Key Change Festival Initiative".[10]
Much of Starr's work engages positively with female sexuality, in contrast to male perspectives often associated with hip-hop culture.[12] Starr identifies as bisexual, and has enjoyed popularity in the queer community.[13]
In 2006 she formally became a mentor for aspiring indigenous musicians as a faculty member with the Manitoba Audio Recording Industry Association's Aboriginal Music Program (AMP) Camp.
Starr appeared as a guest on The Rachel Maddow Show on 11 August 2006.[14] On 31 August, her single "Anything" was the first-ever No. 1 single on CBC Radio 3's new countdown show The R3-30.
Starr has often spoken out, for example during a 2013 performance at Vancouver Folk Music Festival,[15] about the importance of protecting water.
Starr was featured in the Royal British Columbia Museum's major 2008 exhibition, "Free Spirit: Stories of You, Me and BC", as one of 150 cultural icons of BC.[16][17]
