Pochette officielle de l'album « Starrgirl », Mavin Records / Republic Records
Afrobeats is moving into territory it has never occupied before: the halftime show of an NFL game. This Sunday, Ayra Starr becomes the first Afrobeats artist to headline the halftime show of an NFL international game, as the Philadelphia Eagles face the Jacksonville Jaguars at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London. The timing could not be better: the slot lands just days after the release of the official video for “Heaven Baby,” her duet with ZAYN, which cements her place at the center of global pop right now.
A duet that hits its peak with ZAYN
“Heaven Baby” sits at track 14 on “Starrgirl,” Ayra Starr’s third studio album. The production is stripped almost bare, built around a piano with virtually no percussion, leaving all the room to the two voices. The official video, released on October 5 and directed by Earthboi, follows the pair wandering through an empty venue, as if to give physical shape to the longing at the heart of the song. The track found its audience fast: it topped 790,000 Spotify streams on its first full day out, climbed to number three on Spotify Nigeria, and entered the UK’s dedicated Afrobeats Songs chart.
For ZAYN, the collaboration is the latest step in a solo career built far from his old boy-band reflexes: for several years now, the former One Direction member has been stacking up features with artists from scenes that Anglo-American pop barely noticed until recently. Picking Ayra Starr, rather than an act already fixed on American radio playlists, says something about the shift underway: Afrobeats is no longer just imported through one-off guest verses, it now sets its own production rules, right down to the minimal piano that carries “Heaven Baby.”
Starrgirl confirms a rising star
Released on August 14 via Mavin Records and Republic Records, “Starrgirl” is the third album from the Beninese-Nigerian singer, a two-time Grammy nominee for Best African Music Performance. The record’s sixteen tracks line up a guest list that matches her rise, including Wizkid, Rema and Leon Thomas alongside ZAYN. The album had already made streaming history in Nigeria, logging the biggest opening day ever for a female artist on Spotify Nigeria, before crossing 200 million streams across platforms. whatlisten covered the album’s announcement this summer, as afropop’s rising star was gearing up to aim even higher.
Signed to Mavin Records, the Nigerian label that also launched Rema and Crayon, Ayra Starr first broke through in 2021 with “Bloody Samaritan,” before her second album, “19 & Dangerous,” pushed her firmly onto the international stage. That trajectory, built first on African charts before conquering Europe and then the United States, has become a textbook case for a generation of artists from the continent who now refuse to choose between local authenticity and global ambition.
A historic moment in London
Sunday’s performance, broadcast free-to-air in the UK and part of a slate of seven halftime shows the NFL is running across its international games this season, is more than symbolic. It puts an artist born in Benin and based in Nigeria in front of a global audience used to American pop superstars, at the exact moment her career is hitting a new commercial and critical peak. Between an album still breaking streaming records and a duet cementing “Heaven Baby” on the charts, Ayra Starr is proof that Afrobeats no longer has to apologize for taking over the biggest stages.
For a generation of listeners discovering Afrobeats through its crossovers with Western pop, this London halftime slot could well become a reference point, the kind that, before her, helped other long-sidelined scenes finally break into American late-night stages and stadiums.
