Ava like Lava is drawing her own map to pop stardom

<p>“It’s funny how signs kind of show up throughout your life that lead you along an eventual path,” <a href="https://www.instagram.com/itsavalikelava/">Ava like Lava</a> says, sipping gently on an Americano. Black, no sugar. She’s explaining how she found her way to South Africa, a country that has become her third home after moving here to study International Relations at WITS. “South Africa ticked so many boxes for me. It was the fact that, on my Iranian passport, this was actually a viable place for me to move to and go to university. I’m so fucking grateful that Joburg is my reference point for South Africa. I grew up wanting to be a part of something like that. Something naturally diverse.”</p>

<p>The singer, rapper, and — without question — goddamn <em>popstar</em>, is at once arresting, exuding the sort of charisma that leaves you spellbound, but also unguarded. Like meeting an old friend. Perhaps it’s due in part to her unconventional history. “I’m a global citizen from Iran. But I was born in Japan. My family went back to Iran, and I grew up there until I was eight. Then we moved to China, and I started going to a public Chinese school.” </p>

<p>This global upbringing is what makes her such a distinctive presence on a scene that she’s adopted as her own, which is beginning to adopt her in return. Now based in Cape Town, Ava has been operating on the fringes of pop since 2019. Her sound flirts with the hip-hop underground, with early work pulling from a pool of references as varied as her passport. “English is almost the only language where I established my free will and autonomy to express whatever I want. When I was very young I got into this lifelong dream of being a pop star. I watched Britney Spears. I would draw stick figures of her.”</p>

<p>You can hear it on “Genie Out The Bottle”, one of Ava’s recent singles that will leave you well and truly gagged. It’s a slinky, humid piece of work, a bold refresh of the Pop Bible’s Old Testament. Or rather – a reclamation of it. This year, she’s been releasing a single every month, drawing closer to a sound of an artist fully in tune with her identity. Ava has begun exploring the inclusion of traditional SWANA sounds and instrumentation in her work. On “Genie Out The Bottle,” that formula finds its spark. “It was my first time working with my producer, Sai. And it was my first session in Cape Town. I was in the unknown, and these boys made me feel so safe. I started coming out of my shell and directing the process — like, aside from me saying I want to make Middle Eastern pop rap, how do we actually build that together? Breath became an accent. It was highly experimental. The song wrote itself.”</p>

<p>The infectiously sexy dance-floor banger feels like a shift toward something distinctly her own. It’s an astoundingly well realised pop song, an instant classic that sounds entirely in a lane of its own from the rest of what’s been coming from the local scene. Drawing from influences like Timbaland and (naturally) Spears, the song folds in SWANA strings and Arabic scales that speak directly to Ava’s history while sitting comfortably in her diverse catalogue next to the mahraganat trap of “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/5YuAxzYlCuzMDQmRg81xgZ?si=BfSbfSy6TLGIa_nm2Lbb-A">Tokyo Thrift,</a>” or “<a href="https://open.spotify.com/album/1TxnqjeZ3uqMB1kRJS9WNo?si=gmM9rkuWQHSNQM4aL6isIg">Good On You’s</a>” pupil dilating dancepop. “My identity is layered, and it’s okay for my songs not to sound the same. Sonically, I’m obsessed with Middle Eastern sounds. It doesn’t always have to be the melody that represents my culture. Sometimes it’s the production, sometimes it’s a lyrical reference. But there’s always something about where I come from. I come from Iran. It’s a country many people don’t know or understand. My country has never been more in the spotlight, and in its modern history, never been more volatile.”</p>

<p>Her intertwining of pop and politics feels reminiscent of the early rebellion of M.I.A., the unapologetic feminist anarchy of Peaches. But Ava’s approach is less immediate, carried instead by a sharp sense of humour that makes her both accessible and disruptive. “Third World Popstar,” the title of one of her singles, has become something of a slogan for the Ava like Lava brand and its iteration of pop star iconography. “And that’s why for the artwork, I combined my literal passport photo from today with one of my visa photos. I love that it pisses people off,” she says. “I’m reclaiming that. You call us the third world. We know we’re not, but you treat us like we are, don’t you? My passport doesn’t get me into many countries, does it? So you don’t get to tell me what the third world is.”</p>

<p>Her background in international relations was never about diplomacy, but about sharpening the global awareness that already exists within her work. “At WITS, I was majoring in international relations and philosophy. I knew I had no intention of being a diplomat. My country doesn’t want women to do that. Not under this regime. But when it changes, I’m available. So I was like — I’m a musician, I can represent my own country, right? I thought I wanted to be a political voice of reason, but that’s not my strength. My strength is humanising my culture. It’s you listening to the song, it’s me telling you where I’m from through it.”</p>

<p>Part of what makes Ava so compelling as a pop act is her refusal to define herself as any one thing, which in turn results in an artist fully assured of the world she’s building. Like many new artists, she’s mapping her journey. But what makes hers so engrossing is how the cartography is emerging in plain sight, “This is a journey that my listeners are coming along with me. It’s a journey that’s not just mine. Everyone’s on their own version of this.” It’s less a map that leads to a familiar place of pop stardom, and more so one that ventures toward uncharted territory – a place she calls ‘LAVA WORLD.’ The pathway there is one that has no definitive starting point. Instead, it is continuously rediscovered and redefined, even if that means going back to the beginning.</p>

<p>This month, Ava re-released her debut EP <em>Malice in Wonderland</em>. It’s a return to the first place that she discovered on her map, now placed within the expanding universe of LAVA WORLD. Originally released before her current run of singles, it’s a bilingual, restless project that moves through chaos to emerge with confidence. It’s a noisy though intentional space where ego and desire are not tamed, but confronted. Now presented with updated artwork and a new bonus track, “Rabbit Hole,” the project’s return is a contextualisation rather than a revision. <em>Malice</em> is landmark on Ava’s map that locates parts of her earlier chaos that still exist, but now form part of a larger, expanding landscape.</p>

<p>“I’m fine with the fact that I’ve dabbled in so many different things. It’s a fucking experiment,” she says. “I realised everything I’ve done over the past year and a half was the beginning of my album. Or at least part of it. It’s called <em>Terra Incognita</em>. It means unknown land. It’s this old cartography term for parts of the map where people hadn’t been yet. So it was just labeled ‘Terra Incognita’. That felt like the truest reflection of my journey as a creative, and as a globalised woman,” she explains. “From a known world into wherever I’m going. And it’s fine if I don’t know where I’m going. People might be confused by it, but I’m not done playing around in all these worlds I haven’t explored yet.”</p>

<p>The thing about lava — it’s unpredictable at the start. A fierce, fluid force spreading in rivulets of fire wherever it pleases. But it eventually settles. And where it eventually settles? That turns into new land— terra incognita, if you will. Who said pop stars can’t be diplomats?</p>

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Ava like Lava is drawing her own map to pop stardom

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