In just over three minutes, local Emmy®-nominated songwriter, performer, and impact artist Alexander Star captures the magic of Greater Fort Lauderdale in his catchy anthem, “Laudy Dayo.” The song is a vibrant ode to our sun-kissed beaches, fun-loving spirit, and tight-knit community.
He’s performed the infectious tune everywhere recently from a Florida Panthers hockey game and the Riptide Music Festival to perhaps the largest stage of all, atop Visit Lauderdale’s float during the Rose Parade.
“I just want to put Greater Fort Lauderdale on the map,” Star explains. “I want to be a beacon of hope for artists, that you can just be yourself without trying to please anyone and the people who resonate with your frequency can tune in.”
In the song, you’ll hear Greater Fort Lauderdale’s tagline, “everyone under the sun,” and Star is the living embodiment of the phrase. As he describes it, he was born in Pennsylvania to an African-American Southern concert pianist and Ashkenazi Jewish hippie, raised in Tennessee, seasoned in North Carolina, and baked in South Florida. His first introduction to music was from his father, who filled the house with the sounds of Chopin, Mozart, Tchaikovsky, and other classical greats as he tickled the keys of the piano.
Growing up, Star took every opportunity to rap for an audience.
In second grade, he remembers rhyming about his toys to his classmates during show-and-tell before handing out chocolate chip cookies to the impressed crowd. In middle school, he rapped from the bleachers during P.E. and at track meets, drawing a crowd each time.
Then, just the day before 11th grade, he and his family moved from North Carolina to Margate, where he began studying at Coral Springs High School. But Star didn't stop rapping. He found a new spot at Firefighters Park, and his rhymes were so good that one day, they caught the ear of a singer-songwriter named Johnny Mars. Mars was so impressed that he took him under his wing and would later bring him to his first recording studio.
Since then, Star has made a name for himself as an impact artist and anthem architect, performing in Greater Fort Lauderdale and beyond with his band Alexander Star and the Golden People. His song “This is My Era” was used in a Super Bowl commercial promoting coral reef awareness, with football players Larry Fitzgerald, Jarvis Landry, and Mark Sanchez rapping alongside him on a white sand beach. He’s also performed for the United Nations multiple times, wrote “Just One Firefly” for the 211 helpline, and has performed twice at Rwanda’s Ubumuntu Arts Festival.
These accolades made him the perfect fit to write “Laudy Dayo,” a catchy ditty that sprinkles beach rock with whimsical Caribbean flair and Star’s fast-paced bars.
As an impact artist, Star focuses on writing uplifting lyrics as well as uplifting the people around him. He serves as a mentor to aspiring teen songwriters living in foster care. These foster kids have survived experiences “most people can’t imagine,” Star says. And inspiring them to write songs, he adds, helps them heal from past traumas and turn their dreams into a reality.
“It feels liberating,” he says of being a mentor. “Somehow I have an ability to liberate people from chains they’ve placed on themselves, and at the same time, they libertate me in the essence of expanding my understanding of the human experience.”
Listening to Star’s discography, it’s clear that he’s a genre-bending artist who isn’t afraid to explore sound. In fact, he describes his band as Pharrell meets Ludacris meets Linkin Park. If anything, his cultural background, upbringing, and music personifies “everyone under the sun.”
“I will never know what it means to be homogenous,” he says. “That’s representative of what South Florida is. There’s such a mixture of people, cultures here. Of everywhere that I’ve lived, this feels more like home than anywhere else…You can be who you are and nobody will think that you’re weird.”
Check out VisitLauderdale.com/laudydayo for more on the anthem.