Angélique Kidjo and Ayra Starr Share Full-Circle Global Moment in New Single & Music Video “Aye Kan”

Angélique Kidjo returns today with “Aye Kan (Are You Coming Back?)” feat. Ayra Starr, the latest single from her forthcoming album HOPE!! (Parlophone / Warner Music), out April 24. The track unites the 5-time GRAMMY-winning global icon with Ayra Starr, one of the most exciting breakout voices in African pop right now, for a radiant, cross-generational collaboration rooted in shared heritage and a shared belief in what’s possible.

Listen / Watch “Aye Kan” ft. Ayra Starr: https://angeliquekidjo1.lnk.to/ayekan

Arriving alongside the single is the official “Aye Kan (Are You Coming Back?)” music video, an intimate, warmly cinematic visual set inside the legendary New York studio, Power Station. The video captures Kidjo and Starr performing together amid candlelight, a grand piano, and close-up moments of joy and connection—echoing the song’s lyrical core: a commitment-in-love anthem that treats love as wealth and a sustaining force, reframing what it means to be “rich” in a world that often prioritizes status and money over genuine care.

“Aye Kan (Are You Coming Back?)” builds on a story that began years earlier, when Starr—then a child—saw Kidjo win a GRAMMY and realized the same dream could belong to her, too. In a recent interview, Starr recalled: “Angélique Kidjo winning in 2008 was so important for me to see… She’s from Benin Republic, which is where I was born, so it made me believe I could do the same thing one day.” Kidjo says that moment—and Starr’s artistry—sparked the collaboration: “I discovered Ayra Starr first through her music… Later, I sent her a DM saying I’d love to work with her.” The pair reconnected at the GRAMMYs, where Starr told Kidjo she grew up listening to Kidjo’s lullaby “Naima.” “I started singing the lullaby to her, and she said it gave her goosebumps,” Kidjo says. “I told her, ‘I can sing it to you anytime. You’re like a child to me.’”