Angelique Kidjo's 1994 album Ayé, meaning “Life” in the local Beninese language of Fon, is a landmark Afro-funk album that anticipated contemporary developments in Afrobeats music by several decades.

Recorded at Prince's Paisley Park Studios in Minneapolis and Soul 2 Soul Studios in London, the album emerged out of a lineage of global funk stretching from James Brown and Prince to European Afro-house and Burger highlife. While the album partakes of many of the new, smooth synthesized sounds of 1990s music technology, Kidjo firmly grounds its themes in African vodun cosmology, environmental activism, and her own experiences with motherhood. Drawing on interviews with Kidjo and producers David Z and Will Mowat, as well as the lyrical and musical analysis of key tracks such as “Agolo,” this book installs Ayé in its rightful place as a boundary breaking album that raised the bar of what was possible with an Afropop album.