ANGELIQUE KIDJO

African pop singer

“Boy. I would say that it was probably a compilation album of Aretha Franklin’s greatest hits, but I didn’t get it until I moved to Europe.

“In Africa, my brother used to buy a lot of albums when there were still record shops in Benin. But then it became a Communist dictatorship, and all the record shops disappeared so I didn’t have the chance to buy any record albums when I was there. So it wasn’t until I moved to Europe that I bought my first album.

“I was over 20 years old at the time. I remember that day I bought Aretha Franklin, Fela Kuti, Stevie Wonder’s ‘Songs in the Key of Life’ and the fourth one was by James Brown.”