Two things have been crucial to a restless Angélique Kidjo since her childhood in Benin, West Africa: diverse, universal, nuanced brands of truthful musical storytelling in all its forms, and her mother.Selling nearly four million albums worldwide, winning five Grammys, writing a bestselling autobiography, “Spirit Rising,” with its foreword by Desmond Tutu, and becoming the first Black African artist to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame are all just icing on a very sweet cake. She’ll receive her star Aug. 18 at 11:30 in a ceremony at 7011 Hollywood Blvd. Audiennces can watch on walkoffame.com.Since the start of her reign as a queen of West African music (this journalist first spoke to Kidjo in 1991 when “Logozo,” her debut album in the U.S., was released), or now, with 2026’s “Hope,” the singer-composer has been sure to acknowledge the ongoing influence of her mom — a choreographer and theater director — with zeal.As for the universality of her hypnotic, soulful sound and her dynamic, jazzy mezzo-soprano voice, Kidjo’s singing in five languages (Fon, French, Yorùbá, Gen-Mina and English) has forever been key to the funk, its frankness and her grace.Discussing “Hope’s” tour through 2027, “the stretching of my own physical boundaries” and playing music in a world that, though troubled, “may be better off and more unified than we think,” an energetic Kidjo talked about the need for reinvention.“How do I keep my mental health, my priorities and my values in check, and still be the person that I want to be, but evolving in this ever-changing ecosystem?” Kidjo wonders.But inventing herself in the first place is what leads listeners to every magical Kidjo milestone: 1996’s “Fifa” where she first sang in English; 2007’s “Djin Djin,” for which she won her first contemporary world music album Grammy; her back-to-back 2019 albums, “Remain in Light” and “Celia,” where she imaginatively captured the music of Talking Heads (“When I met David Byrne, I asked if he’s sure he’s American as he’d been speaking about my culture like he lived there forever,” she says) and Celia Cruz.Her new Africana-laced R&B album, “Hope,” with Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers, takes Kidjo to sleek pop places she’s rarely visited while maintaining her earthen, conscious lyricism.
Then there are the works with minimalist classical composer Philip Glass on the poetic “Ife”: “Three Yoruba Songs” and “Symphony No. 12” (which additionally paid tribute to David Bowie’s “Lodger”) that Kidjo called “my greatest aesthetic challenges.”If she goes back to the start of her career, then before that to her childhood on stage at her mother’s Theatre du Benet company at age 6, Kidjo admits that “my values are the same values as always. They’re about me telling a compelling story, my compelling story… humanity stories,” all filled with the core values passed down to Kidjo by her parents.“Don’t come up with funny excuses,” she says. If you deserve respect, give respect back.
And if you deserve to be loved, you have to start loving yourself to be able to see the other person important to you. … My mom made me this person that I am by making me think about how my words can hurt. Mom always used to say a word is like an egg. When it falls, you can’t put it back.
When you hurt somebody with your words, it stays. The pain you inflict on somebody’s soul with words has consequences for you too. Because when you put that bad stuff in the universe, it comes back changed.
You might not like that change, and you don’t choose the time when it comes back.”Thinking about such consequences while living and thriving among her family (seven boys, three girls) during childhood, Kidjo was blessed with being loved and seen and given the opportunity and the freedom to speak freely and be herself.Those elements are the very core of her lifelong values, aesthetically, spiritually and humanistically.“I have been told by my uncles and aunties in the village that I was that child that always asked all the questions and never got enough answers,” Kidjo says, laughing.It’s important to note that as much gravitas and import that Kidjo placed upon her mother’s words and questions, there was a playful life lesson to be had between mother and daughter. Like having her mom, until the time of her passing during COVID-19, pushing Angélique to eat, nagging her to gain weight.“She told me that I needed to eat hamburgers in America, or to come home so that she could put some flesh on my bones,” Kidjo remembers.Earlier in their relationship, there was the back-and-forth between mother and child when it came to 6-year-old Kidjo demanding to play lead roles in her mother’s plays (“Why can’t I be the little girl that’s singing and doing all these things? I knew all the stuff by heart”), to being frightened when that same lead princess suddenly contracted malaria, and young Angélique had to go on.“Mom grabbed my ankle and I said, ‘Nah, I ain’t going on.’ Until she then put the costume on me and shot me on stage.
I was just shaking like crazy. But I said to myself, ‘The heck with it. Just go for it.’ So, I start singing.
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