When Ayra Starr released “Hot Body,” it was no surprise that the track landed as an instant hit when it was released. The song ushers listeners in with slow-building sensuality; a guitar line that refuses silence circling like an incantation, accompanied by a hushed, almost inaudible murmur that gradually intensifies before breaking into the voiced refrain “initiating… rage… process.” Few seconds after, the drums step in and, right before we know it, the lyrics arrive with an assertive tone from the Star:

Look
Look what the hot body can do
Look
Focus
Look what the hot body can do
Body be dancin’
Slow whine, summer body so fine

From the outset, what becomes conspicuous is Ayra audacious performance of femininity and autonomy. She wastes no time to compel us from the beginning of the song to “look,” declaring this as an imperative that goes beyond mere observation but more critically directing our attention to the power of embodiment itself, insisting, “Look what the hot body can do.” This assertion is notable because Ayra, rather than submitting to casual voyeuristic consumption—the familiar ubiquitous “male gaze” that objectifies women’s bodies, and particularly African women’s bodies—she reclaims authority and authorship over her representation and frames the body as active, agentive, and powerful.

Throughout the song she boasts about her “whine,” the “summer body so fine,” and the power she wields about how she is now a “controller,” for she is now the one who holds the “remote.” The metaphor she summons here is emblematic of operationalized control which positions her as a leader and figure of authority who revels and, in fact, luxuriates in unrestrained freedom. I also wonder if her reference to holding the “remote” may equally serve as a satirical nod to Nigerian domestic culture, where control of the television remote—commonly reserved for parents—symbolizes household authority. But in her performance, she, perhaps, inverts that same gesture into an assertion of bodily power and self-directed autonomy.

Nevertheless, Ayra furthers her reclamation in her line, “E go flow like water wey get free supply,” which translates to “It will flow like water with free supply.” In other words, her autonomy is unlimited and it not rationed or subject to external authority because it is an inexhaustible resource. She drives this point home emphatically and insist that all gaze be fixed on the body as an instrument of agency and autonomy:

Open your eyes, and look
Look what the hot body can do

Ayra’s “Hot Body” is no doubt a timely piece. In recent years, debates on women’s rights and bodily autonomy have grown more urgent and necessary. This is especially true in Nigeria and across Africa where women’s bodies continue to be policed, regulated, and subjected to cultural restrictions on what they can or should do. Ayra’s intervention, however, flips the script and says: I am a woman, and I can do whatever I want with my body—period.

While “Hot Body” champions this discourse of bodily autonomy, it simultaneously complicates the very narrative it advances. Although the music video features Black women across shades, it tacitly narrows hot body to the slender form; the on-screen cast skews predominantly skinny. The video’s nationalistic gesture—Ayra scantily dressed in the colors of the Nigerian flag before a giant green-white-green backdrop—announces location and pride, but it still misses an opportunity to stage hotness as boundless and be inclusive of diverse body types, beautiful “imperfections,” and a fuller range of contours.

One wonders whether this narrowing is a by-product of Ayra’s youth (she is only 23) or reflective of a broader Nigerian cultural default that tend to lack sensitivity to critical questions of race and body. Perhaps. Or perhaps, we should read the song for what it principally does; assert bodily autonomy in a youthful pop form and invite listeners—whose bodies may be “hot” or not by conventional standards—to move with the music’s permission and pleasure.