From rural Delaware to the Met Gala in a matter of months, hip hop’s hottest new diva Cortisa Star talks to fashion disruptors Opia about furry conventions, squat raves, and becoming the rap star she was born to be
This story is taken from the autumn 2025 issue of Dazed. Order a copy here.
“I don’t even know how I got here,” Cortisa Star’s voice catches on the line. Calling in from Paris, the Delaware-raised, Baltimore-based rapper is on the first leg of her first European tour after a whirlwind year, which has seen the 20-year-old rise from virtual unknown to viral internet sensation. She’s received co-signs from Charli xcx and Doechii, to name but a few, and made her runway debut as a Miu Miu girl at Paris Fashion Week for AW25 – all in a matter of months. “The rapping started as a joke and the modelling was so great,” she says. “Every day I wake up and I love it.”
For Opia’s Bambi Dyboski and Bautista Botto Barilli, the party girls turned London fashion insiders, this evolution from underground to mainstream is a familiar story. What began with the duo posting fashion skits on socials to promote their high-octane party as a response to seeing brands capitalise on the coolness of queer culture – transformed into a 360-degree fashion identity. Brand collaborations soon followed, while one recent showcase with the Institute of Digital Fashion merged celebrity aesthetics with mukbangs and a live drone performance. “We were pretending we were already famous,” Botto Barilli explains. “Doing random things not just for our friends to look at. Then it started getting bigger and suddenly it was like, ‘I guess this isn’t a joke any more.’ Sometimes, you really do need to fake it till you make it.”
Star and Opia are doing things their own way. As disruptive forces in their respective fields, their unfiltered approaches to music and fashion are subverting the industry standard – whether it’s Star’s fast, glitched-out bars about furry conventions and trans girlhood, or Opia’s queer rave-scene takeover of the official fashion circuit. “Realness is a mindset and a reality,” Star concludes. “If you’re not real, you will never be real.”
Bauti Botto Barilli: Everyone has a pop diva they grow up with, and it sets you up for how you’re gonna live life and what aesthetic you’re gonna live your life based on. Mine’s Nicki Minaj.
Bambi Dyboski: Mine’s Gwen Stefani.
Cortisa Star: Y’all are crazy. I was just about to say Gwen Stefani and Nicki Minaj, but also the anime and furry music I listened to growing up. It’s just so embedded in me.
Bambi Dyboski: Yeah, I was wondering about the furry music – what is that?
Cortisa Star: There used to be a really heavy furry rave scene in the 2010s, and the music was so specific and random.
Bambi Dyboski: If you could only have one wig for life, would it be a pink wig, a blonde wig or a black wig?
Cortisa Star: Honestly, a nasty 613 [blonde] always does me right. I used to only wear black and pink hair, but then I wore a blonde wig to a show in Texas one time, and ever since then I have not stopped being blonde. I don’t know why.
Bambi Dyboski: I feel like the first time I wore a blonde wig I was like, [gasps].
Cortisa Star: It’s like, the world’s not flat, it’s round.
Bauti Botto Barilli: Bambi and I have this one experience of being at a certain designer’s Halloween ball and then going to a Halloween squat rave in an abandoned bread factory, so essentially going from the party of our dreams to the party of our nightmares. But it was also our dream, we live for a squat rave.
Cortisa Star: I live for a squat rave – anything raunchy or banjee, I love.
Bauti Botto Barilli: This set us up as being underground, but also mainstream. Counterculture, but now we’re getting picked up by culture – for example, you and Miu Miu. Big-ass brands that have been there for aeons.
I’m not falling for the Labubu rhetoric. I’m anti-Labubu. I’m anti-Dubai chocolate. All of it
Bambi Dyboski: What is your staple outfit? What’s your uniform?
Cortisa Star: A uniform? Honestly, I really liked this one look from the runway in Miu Miu. I freaked. It was like a plaid-type skirt with the most random colours, with a yellow top and a jacket. I’m not gonna lie, I think about it every day.
Bambi Dyboski: And what’s one fashion item you’d like to add to that uniform?
Cortisa Star: Probably a black thong, any brand. That way you’d have, like, the above ground and the underground. [laughs]
Bambi Dyboski: What do you think about Labubu?
Cortisa Star: Only a 24-carat gold Labubu. No, I’m not falling for the Labubu rhetoric. I’m anti-Labubu. I’m anti-Dubai chocolate. All of it.
Bauti Botto Barilli: Because you’re the trendsetter. You don’t need to follow in Labubu’s footsteps.
Cortisa Star: You can hang Cortisa on a purse, but Labubu could never make fun.
Bauti Botto Barilli: We’re not fast-fashion queens. Fuck the Labubu, we’re high-brow. When was the moment that you were like, “Gag, I am entering the fashion world”?
Cortisa Star: Honestly, the rapping started as a joke and the modelling was so great. Every day I wake up I’m like, “Yes. I love it.” I have no idea how I got to this point.
Bauti Botto Barilli: We had a similar experience when we started our TikToks, ironically. We were pretending we were already famous, interviewing these old-ass men, being like, “Are you gonna come to Opia? Are you gonna come on Opia?” And doing random shit for our friends to look at. Then it started getting bigger, and suddenly it was like, “I guess this isn’t a joke any more.”
Cortisa Star: The first TikTok I ever posted was me pretending I’m the underground rap princess.
Bauti Botto Barilli: There is a level of delulu-ness you need – you have to high-key pretend. Honestly, it’s this thing that’s happening with our generation where everybody is so meta-ironic. It’s like, “I’m actually gonna do this.”
Cortisa Star: I just started inviting myself to shows and I was meeting all these new people. I would go to New York and just go to a random rave and they would be like, “Come perform this song.” I’m like, “OK, period.” The first show I went to was in Boston. I drove seven hours and had my licence taken away. I did a week-long trip to New York recently and I was ripping and running, going to the studio and then on to a rave. It was just the fast pace, I love it. I love being distracted.
Bambi Dyboski: What’s the craziest place you’ve ended up?
Cortisa Star: The Met Gala afterparty was pretty crazy.
Bambi Dyboski: No way.
Cortisa Star: It was the Doechii one. It was crazy. There were naked ladies twerking on stage.
Bauti Botto Barilli: Oh, my God. Have you ever been to [NY techno club] Basement?
Cortisa Star: No. I’m only 20.
Bauti Botto Barilli: OK, tea. That is a gag.
Cortisa Star: I turned 20 three days ago.
Bauti Botto Barilli: What would be your go-to tip for the New York party girl?
Cortisa Star: Do not take that drink from that man.
Bauti Botto Barilli: Would you take a drink from a girl?
Cortisa Star: Yeah, I have. But, like, I’m not receiving it. I’m actually taking it.
Ohio is where all the craziest bitches come from. There is something about how coming from very normal-town America brings out the craziest artist
Bauti Botto Barilli: What’s the lasting impact you want to leave on the fashion world? What’s something you really want to be doing in, say, five years?
Cortisa Star: I don’t really know about impact, but there are some projects that I want to do. I want to start a magazine – a fashion and culture magazine – where all the models are my bitches, or just random people from the street, because we need some more real bitches off the street.
Bauti Botto Barilli: For almost every shoot we organise, we’re doing it with scene queens – girls from our scene that are hot as fuck and get into any club. We meet them at the club – connecting the street to fashion is what we sleep for. The next Anna Wintour doesn’t have to be Jeff Bezos’s cis wife – it can be any femme-presenting being that comes from the street.
Bambi Dyboski: What’s the craziest DM you’ve ever got?
Cortisa Star: Someone DMed me like, “You want to be a white teen girl so bad.”
Bauti Botto Barilli: I’m Latin, even though I’m quite white, but we get called white chicks a lot, because we are always always blonde-wigging it. And then I get clocked so hard.
Cortisa Star: I call these bitches Big Ben, because they’re always ready to clock something.
Bauti Botto Barilli: What’s a cuter DM you’ve received?
Cortisa Star: There will be younger trans girls saying things like, “I love your music. You make me feel so inspired.” They’ll say my music keeps them alive, and that’s just crazy. It’s so cute and sweet that I can inspire younger trans girls to be like, “Yes, I am a tranny.”
Bauti Botto Barilli: And to be fully balls-to-the-walls cuckoo crazy as well. I feel like you’re helping a lot of divas be like, “Oh, I can be fully out here doing whatever I want to do.” I feel like a lot of dolls, or at least some of the older dolls, are being a bit more quiet, or living a quiet life with a white-picket fence – the American dream. This is why we love your lyrics like, “Keepin’ it fresh while I’m shakin’ my butt / Fuck with your man and I’m makin’ him nut.” Speaking of, you’re from Delaware, which is the first state ever. How does being from Delaware lead to “Fuck with your man and I’m makin’ him nut”?
Cortisa Star: I think just the despair and dread of it all. Just living there made me insane, so I made crazy songs. I hate that place.
Bauti Botto Barilli: I mean, there’s this whole lore about how Ohio is where all the craziest bitches come from. There is something about how coming from very normal-town America brings out the craziest artists.
Cortisa Star: In my small town in southern Delaware, I knew everybody. You go outside, you recognise everybody. It was so small. It was racist, homophobic, transphobic. You get drive-by hate crimes. But my character was definitely built there.
Bauti Botto Barilli: For me, my character was built in New York’s underground bits, and then also online, which was really the place to go fully crazy. Existing online can be a bit gaggy, because it’s like, “Is that me or is it a version of me?” How do you see Cortisa the artist-rapper-performer? Is that an alter ego?
Cortisa Star: Maybe someone who sees me all the time would be a better person to ask.
I call these bitches Big Ben, because they’re always ready to clock something
Bauti Botto Barilli: What does existing online as a doll mean to you, in terms of creativity and persona?
Cortisa Star: Being a doll online is like winning the Hunger Games, but the trade is trying to kill you and you also want to kill the trade. But it’s awesome, because you meet all the other trans girls. I’ve met so many awesome trans girls who make music. I like to draw. I just do random shit – like, bitch, it’s a good community. I play Dungeons and Dragons with my bitches online.
Bauti Botto Barilli: What’s your D&D character?
Cortisa Star: My character is a dark elf who’s a detective and uses her magic to discern things. She has summoning abilities, her weapons are alive.
Bauti Botto Barilli: OK, speed round. Fuck, marry, kill: Jersey club, recession pop and trap.
Cortisa Star: We’re gonna kill Jersey club, because I’m real Baltimore club. Then we can fuck the recession pop and marry trap.
Bambi Dyboski: Do you have any tips on keeping it real?
Cortisa Star: Being mindful is the number one thing. You gotta be mindful of yourself and others, just being aware. A lot of people are not aware, they’re not looking or hearing or even seeing. But honestly, the way my mind works, I’m so logical – I barely even have friends in the industry, all my closest friends I’ve had since I was five years old. I think they ground me a lot. They’re Big Ben. They love the clock. They keep me humble.
Hair Erol Karadag at MA+ Group using Bumble and bumble., make-up Julian Stoller using M.A.C. talent Cortisa Star at Next, casting gk-ld