Angélique Kidjo’s 5 most important albums, in her own words

To celebrate the 65th birthday of the first Black African women to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, we asked Angélique Kidjo to talk through the five of her most influential and life-changing recordings, starting with 1981 debut Pretty in Paris, recorded aged 20 with legendary Cameroonian artist Ekambi Brillant at the helm.

A decade later she hit the mainstream with the commercial breakthrough Logozo, released in 1991 after the intervention of Island Records founder Chris Blackwell; and we just had to discuss the ambitious trio of conceptual root-tracing records begun with 1998’s Oremi. 

And of course, we couldn't avoid asking Kidjo how she recruited legends including Carlos Santana, Alicia Keys, Peter Gabriel and Ziggy Marley for 2007’s Grammy-winning Djin Djin; before finally moving onto late-career orchestral masterpiece Sings (2015), and the subsequent collaboration with Philip Glass it sparked.

An incredible life, incredibly told, from the back of a taxi, by the singular human who lived it all.