At first glance she looks like the girl around the way, the neighborhood girl, the girl next door. According to her social network sites she idealized Lauren London and says she wanted to grow up and be like her. Starr studied dance and the Lou Conte Dance Hubbard Studio and at Visceral Dance Studio under Trae Turner, head director of Hip Hop Connexion, at dance crew in Chicago. After appearing in several dance shows she began appearing as a dancer in indie rap artist videos.
The world of hip hop has always been a male, macho dominated world. Regional rivalries of the past gave way to masochist, sometimes degrading lyrics of women as in “As Nasty as They Want to be” (Campbell, 1991), which with the behavior of the bad violated the Obscenity laws in Miami in 1991. The male dominated world of rap music gave little encouragement to anything to the contrary. Few women sat atop the dome of success in rap at once, Mc Lyte moved over for Queen Latifah, and then replaced with Missy Elliott. Then Lil Kim and my favorite song by her “Suck My Dick”, with a no hold bars approach like the men that preceded her. For different reason Lil Kim’s “ballsiness” was very refreshing to me as a Trans female. Most refreshing was her, in a man’s face not backing down approach that I admire. Still she was objectified to a degree in the industry.
This past July, Sidney Starr released a YouTube video apologizing she lied about sleeping with the rap artist Chingy. In the video Starr admits Chingy never hit it and that the story about dating him was false. Going on to say she did it for attention…because it’s hard being transgendered. Well she’s commended for coming forth with any truth, but wait did she say transgendered? It seems she did and now the transgender queen of rap dance video has become a rap vixen herself. Let’s remember that this is the rough macho world of rap music, which has come a long way or has it? Thankfully the lgbt community has seen the rise of its first major rap artist Cazwell, and even the hip hop mogul whose probably considered the grandfather of the hip hop industry, Russell Simmons in a recent statement in Details magazine ,referring to new hip hop artist Frank Ocean, “The fans are more tolerant,” and Andreana Clay the author of The Hip-Hop Generation Fights Back, went on to say in Details, “There’s always been a ‘queer’ presence in hip-hop. The magazine goes on to mention other lgb artist.
While the upper echelons of the hip hop industry maybe so opening, we can only hope with fingers cross for the future success of Sidney Starr as she climbs the ladder of the macho world of rap. The urbandaily’s recent article on Starr went so far as to say she has proven by showing her birth certificate, that indeed she was born a man. It seems some in the hip hop industry are still having shell shock. Even if she did come out as a transsexual as a hoax would that actually say more than her being Trans as to how far we’ve come? Imagine a celebrity claiming to be transsexual to get ahead wow that would be interesting, but for now we will take her word. Unfortunately Starr has had to endure the new name ‘hip hop tranny’. Regardless of name, Sidney Starr proves in her latest release and video she’s got a new Pièce de résistance (showpiece), to give to the world of Hip Hop. Transmuseplanet salutes our sister and hopes she stays strong and focus because she does have a much needed improvement that’s needed in the hip hop world.
If you didn’t see Sidney’s new release posted as a feature video on homepage click here, the apology video click here
Sabrina Samone, writer for T.M.P
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