In the realm of music, perhaps no genre can pride itself in uplifting people from a hopeless situation more than rap can, and few stories are as seemingly hopeless as Star2’s. He was born among the Karen (Ka-ren) people in Burma/Myanmar, a persecuted ethnic minority and targets of a monstrous ethnic cleansing campaign by the government and military. He lost his parents and his village, and was forced to flee with his grandmother to a refugee camp in the Thailand-Burma border where a lottery pick would get both of them and her four other children to the U.S. 

You’d think “and they lived happily ever after” would follow, but the penniless refugee family in the streets of San Diego had to endure years of poverty, a language barrier, racism, gang violence and more before all was said and done. Thankfully for Star2, music was there to pull him out of that rough world, and today he’s a unique rising voice in representation of both his Ka-ren people as well as Asians in the realm of Hip-hop.

 

To help him in that last regard, Star2 recruited acclaimed Asian Long Beach rapper, $tupid Young, for his new single and music video “Big Bands”. The coming-of-age track details some of the roughest chapters of S2’s life in San Diego. This new song is sixth on his Real Life EP featuring Luh Kel (“I Wanna Get F’d Up”) and Lil Poppa (“Real Life”). It follows his last two hits: “Thinkin Bout You” (1M views on YouTube) and “Run Away” (5M views on WorldStar Hip Hop).

Star2 isn’t just hip-hop. He’s got rhymes, sure, but beyond that he’s got the vocal qualities to bring in some legit R&B smoothness to the mix, and the pop sensibilities that artists like Justin Bieber have inspired him with make his sound a bit more rich, groovy and catchy than a lot of his contemporaries. That’s one part of his musical charm, the other is of course his tenacious songwriting, often rooted in some of the harshest and cruelest realities that still plague the modern world; one of the most fascinating aspects of this is that far from being bitter, his words can carry instead a deep sorrow with a air of dignity and a message of overcoming.

 

Through a long-standing collaboration with acclaimed producer Chico Bennett (Prince, Madonna, Lady Gaga, the Killers, Hillary Duff, Britney Spears) as well as many other brilliant rappers, Star2 has amassed a huge following and millions of cross-platform streams to match. His creative work doesn’t end with music, however, as the young artist has expanded his content creation towards Vlogging in his “The Adventures of Star2.” video series on YouTube.

 

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