Angélique Kidjo on fleeing Benin: ‘I hid under the plane chair until take off’

Last July, it was announced that Angelique Kidjo would become the first ever Black African performer to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. The Benin-born global icon and multiple Grammy winner couldn’t believe it. “I woke up in the morning and my husband told me,” she recalls. “I said, ‘If this is a joke, it’s not funny at all.’”

It wasn’t a joke. She will be inducted in the 2026 class in August alongside Demi Moore, Miley Cyrus and Timothée Chalamet. “It’s really daunting. For me, to absorb that is gonna take some time.” She is aware of the significance. “I think it’s a door that I start opening for more to come, from every walk of life.” Kidjo has been opening doors her entire career, I tell her. “I mean, finally somebody pays attention,” she says, smiling.

The accolade is testament to Kidjo’s decades-long impact. The 65-year-old has been breaking down barriers and challenging western perceptions of Africa since her incredible escape from Benin’s communist dictatorship in 1983. Her breakthrough album for Island Records, 1991’s Logozo, saw her on the cover dressed in a black-and-white zebra-patterned unitard and cropped hair, a powerful display of contemporary African womanhood. It was a response to a stylist who had met with Kidjo and her team to discuss the photo shoot. “She goes, ‘Your artist is an African woman, right? Why do you want a stylist? Don’t they work naked in her country?’ And I said to her, ‘I’ll show you how we are modern in Africa. Watch it.’”

Her hero James Brown rang her to congratulate her on the record, and Kidjo has since worked with everyone from Bono and David Byrne, to Philip Glass and Peter Gabriel, to Alicia Keys and John Legend. The first of her five Grammys in the “world music” categories came for 2007 album Djin Djin. Her musical style – over the years a joyful and emotive mix of afrobeat, funk, jazz, reggae and gospel – has diverged into reimagining Talking Heads’ album Remain in Light in 2018 and 2019’s Celia, an album covering the work of Cuban salsa star Celia Cruz.

Kidjo’s last album, 2021’s climate change-warning Mother Nature, saw her modernise by incorporating a pop sound, and featured a new generation of African stars such as Burna Boy and Sampa the Great, all of whom hold Kidjo in such regard they call her “Mum”. In 2021, Time Magazine branded Kidjo “Africa’s premier diva”, also acknowledging her extensive charity work for UNICEF, Oxfam and her own Batonga Foundation.

Kidjo’s new album HOPE!! – its capitalisation and double exclamation mark a very deliberate emphasis – is her 19th. It champions positivity in trying times. It features production and co-writes on three songs from Pharrell Williams, contributions from Nile Rodgers and Nigerian superstar Davido, as well as fellow Benin-born artist Ayra Starr, who was inspired to start singing after watching Kidjo’s Grammy win in 2008.

The album is Kidjo’s way of offering optimism in a world she sees as more divided than ever. “It’s divided because we stay complacent and we stay silent. Where is the youth saying nonsense to your guy from the far right? Division is nonsense. Hatred is cowardice, period. Everybody’s an immigrant from somewhere. Because all those people that call themselves far right, they won’t change anything. They don’t have the solution. All they want is to create chaos and misery. I don’t believe in hate. I believe in hope.”

Dressed in a dark jacket decorated with African flower patterns, Kidjo is sitting at a corner table in a central London bar; she is so engrossed in conversation she seems entirely oblivious to the fact that five policemen storm into the bar to arrest two people who had broken into the venue’s downstairs office. Born in July 1960, just weeks before Benin won independence from its French colonisers, Kidjo started singing at six, encouraged by her middle-class family (her mum ran a theatre company). But in 1972, Benin fell to a Marxist-Leninist dictatorship who ruled through fear. “What changed for me is the fact that I could not speak freely anymore. Anyone that comes to the house is a potential danger. That distrust is terrible to see. It breaks societies.”

By the time Kidjo was recording and singing, the government was forcing artists to record and promote its propaganda. “You have to sing for the revolution, ‘The fight continues!’ And I never did. My father always used to say to me, as an artist, you can’t sing anybody’s ideology. In interviews I didn’t talk about politics. I didn’t say anything.”

In September 1983, Kidjo fled Benin for Paris. The story is quite incredible. Kidjo didn’t have official authorisation to leave, and faced lengthy imprisonment if caught, but was determined to pursue a music career free of the oppressive regime. She planned an escape with the aid of her father during her cousin’s wedding. She stored her passport, ticket and small bag of belongings in her dad’s car, and between the church service and evening do, she slipped out: her dad took a photo – “You can see on my face. I was not happy. I was sad to leave” – and drove her towards the airport.

“My dad could not drive me too close to the airport, so I had to walk quite a way with my suitcase. My last image of my dad is him weeping behind the wheel, saying, ‘If something happened to you, I never forgive myself.’” She was taking a huge chance, but got lucky when one of the customs officers was a friend of her brother’s. He snuck Kidjo onto the plane at an opportune moment. “He said to me, ‘Run, disappear, go!’ So I ran onto the plane and hid under a chair until take off.” She was too scared to eat, drink or even move until she landed in Paris six-and-a-half hours later.

She had essentially exiled herself: from Paris she couldn’t even contact her family. “I couldn’t call my country. I didn’t speak to my parents for six years.” Even now, despite her status and success, she maintains a certain paranoia. “I never travel alone. When I’m going to a country, somebody is always with me, and their room is always next to my room in the hotel. And before I go to bed, they will check that I’m okay.” And she still feels like she is being spied on? The dictatorship collapsed in 1990. “Yes, because every artist was on the watchlist. Every time the phone rings, we don’t speak about anything.”

Does her success justify her decision? “My parents don’t think about it like that. They just say, ‘Congratulations for what you have done.’ Perhaps, I don’t know why, I’ve been waiting for the judgment. It never came.”

HOPE!! has a celebratory feel, but it actually came from a period of grief. Kidjo’s mother died suddenly during the pandemic. Kidjo talks movingly today of her mother’s character and matriarchal influence, and it took her time to be able to be creative. She lost her ability to sing, starting with her mum’s funeral, where at her mum’s request she tried in vain to sing her favourite song, “Malaika,” a Swahili love song from 1945. “She said, ‘I love that song. You better sing it to me, even if it’s one word.’ So I tried.” Her voice struggled to recover. “I went to see my voice doctor. He said, ‘Whatever you’re holding on to yourself, you gotta let it go.’” But she has paid the ultimate tribute to her mum: a moving version of “Malaika” closes HOPE!!.

But grief-stricken, Kidjo was struggling to write. Eventually, she was encouraged to write down 10 words on a piece of paper that summed up her mother: among the words were “defiance, resilience, kindness, determination, fearless, joy”. She took inspiration, remembering her mother had also instilled these traits in her. Throughout HOPE!!, she says, “I want to share, I won’t call it wisdom, but just the spirit of my mother. I think that my mum is watching over us. And when I finished this album, I felt a little bit lifted.”

Pharrell Williams was a key collaborator: in September last year, he invited Kidjo to perform at the Grace For The World concert at the Vatican’s St Peter’s Square. In rehearsals, he was wowed by Kidjo. “He just stood up – ‘Angelique! Your voice! What are you working on? I’m going to write you something.’” “Bando” opens the album, an anthem for the underclass. “Everything comes from the ghettos, because when you have nothing, you create magnificent stuff.”

The song takes aim at the “monopoly of life.” “We still have ghettos in the 21st century, and we have 0.1 per cent of people that are billionaires with all the money. How do you do that? No one wants to be a victim. We all want to be victorious. But we must realise that the system in which we are living can be transformed by us, nobody else.”

One song, “You Can,” encourages the younger generation to use their voice and make a difference. The song is steadfast in its sincerity. “Yes, you can change the world. The whole album is for the young generation. This album is where the young can find themselves living and being strong. This is something that people can build on.”

She’s now giving me a rousing speech. “Let’s be hopeful. Let’s focus. Don’t be distracted by fake news. Get to work!”

‘HOPE!!’ is out now