Star Ana Flowers, the 16-year-old rapper better known as Star Bandz, is relaxing in her bedroom at her family’s house in south suburban Sauk Village. This isn’t your typical teenager’s crib: Designer bags hang from the walls. Pristine shoeboxes line her closets like trophies, each carefully preserved to showcase the labels. A plaque from YouTube commemorates her reaching 100,000 subscribers.
It’s a fitting space to show off the bounty from her recent breakout success, since this room has also served as her muse. “Every time a song blows up that I wrote in my room, I just think, Dang, I was really in this bed,” she says. “I made so many good songs in here, just sitting here with my legs crisscrossed applesauce.”
Her biggest hit, “Yea Yea,” released last March, was named one of the 100 best songs of the year by Pitchfork. The accompanying video, which has more than 4 million views on YouTube, was filmed, in part, during her 16th birthday party. “I’m 16 doing shows / Rock out like I’m a guitar,” she raps on the track. (She keeps her lyrics mostly age-appropriate — no cussing.)
Flowers grew up singing but didn’t begin rapping until five years ago, after a friend of her mother’s encouraged her. “I was talking about money, I was talking about my family, like my mom, my brother,” she recalls of her first song. “It was good for a 12-year-old.” In 2023, she started to find success with a trio of singles whose videos each reached a million views on YouTube.
Now she’s back at work, listening to new beats and writing new bars. This year expect a deluxe version of Estrella, the mixtape she dropped in 2024 — including the viral smash “My Baby,” a collaboration with New York City rapper Sugarhill Ddot — and a debut album. Bandz, who has already opened for bigtime rappers like Lil Durk and Polo G, also has plans for a national tour. All of this leaves little doubt: Star is already living up to her name.