photography. left. Mingo right. Twins Photography clothing. Eldior Sodeck
AMÉMÉ is carrying the torch for African electronic music one set at a time. The Benin artist started out in New York and has since played all over the world.
This summer he debuted a five-week residency at Ibiza’s Cova Santa, featuring acts like Honeyluv, Kitty Amor, Da Capo, LP Giobi, Coco & Breez . Hubert Sodogandji, known as AMÉMÉ, is focused, spirited and full of the kind of confidence you need to make a name for yourself in the big apple and beyond.
Co-signed by the likes of Black Coffee , his story of perseverance and authenticity has taken him and his creative peers far under his Brooklyn collective One Tribe. In an interview with Schön! during his Ibiza residency, we learn how he transitioned from a man in finance to an artist breaking barriers.
You spent 20 years in New York. Can you tell us about your time there?
When I moved to New York, I think I was very unjaded, like, fresh from Africa, super positive, super open. It’s funny because I had so many different lives.
I moved to New York when I was supposed to get into a pre-med programme. After two years I was like, man, I don’t think I can be a doctor.
I [needed] something a little bit more flexible. There were loads of finance bros going to the clubs so I was like, this could be cool and I’m good at math, so why not?
I worked in banking for seven years.
So when did it get to the point where you were doing finance to saying, bye guys, I’m gonna be a DJ and travel the world?
M usic has always been part of my life. When I was a kid I did musical theatre and then I was in a band for many years with my brother.
My brother exposed me to electronic music. [He] went to Lyon. After he graduated from high school, he came back a year after with a mohawk and skinny pants.
He had the CDs and he was always playing them. I would get lost into this and somehow it just grew me.
When did you turn that love for music into DJing?
I discovered this store called Guitar Centre, it’s like an electronic music store [with] DJ decks for people to see what they wanted to buy. Coming from Benin, it was such a foreign concept to me.
I spent 6 months there every single day after school and I taught myself how to DJ. I graduated, started in the banking world.
I was already playing a couple of bars here or there. Music was kind of like my escape.
Seven years down the line, I lose my job. I got paid a severance package, had some time off.
Two weeks after, I’m like, yo, I’m bored. I can’t do this.
I’m gonna DJ. Just for like a month and then I’ll apply for a job.
Then people came like, yo, dude, what are you doing? This is dope.
You should keep doing this thing. I call my mom, like, listen.
I’m 27 now. If I don’t try now, I’ll never try.
I would send music and nobody would respond. So I just put two of my friends together [and said], all right, let’s start our own label. My first song, somehow Black Coffee picked it up. People started to call me.
I was obviously pushing the whole afro house sound way before it [was] everywhere like now. I think a lot of people were not really like receptive to it.
I would get a lot of pushback. “your sound is too drum-y, it’s too many African vocals.” I was like, listen, I need to create a space for myself where I don’t have to depend on somebody else’s opinion, then we could create a community out of it.
What do you feel about the change of reception to African electronic music?
For me, it’s a confirmation that you can just rely on what people tell you. People’s opinions don’t matter.
You have a residency at Ibiza’s Cova Santa this summer. How do you feel about it?
I’m excited. This is the Mecca of electronic music. Being able to have your feet on the ground and have a space you can call home speaks volume of your trajectory as an artist in the music industry. Cova Santa is one of the few places left that really have like the real spirit of Ibiza, you know?
AMÉMÉ’s new song “Chulo” will release on 18 September via Altra Moda Music.
photography. Twins Photography + Mingo talent. AMÉMÉ words. Shama Nasinde
There is a rhythm to life on tour. For Swae Lee , Europe became a moving landscape of these moments.
Across the EU, each stop brought its own atmosphere, but the same restless energy followed from one city to the next. His European run was a study in movement — music, fashion, travel, adrenaline — and the fleeting feeling of being somewhere for only a moment before moving on to another place to explore.
Check out his en route diary below.
Sitting on suitcases, I’m staying on the road.
Blending in camouflage, can’t even see me.
photography. Michael Gilbert editor. Kelsey Barnes
On September 10, an alarm clock rang through London’s O2 Arena. Moments later, the one-and-only Hilary Duff appeared to the opening notes of “Wake Up.” It was a fitting entrance for a star on a worldwide comeback tour.
“The Lucky Me Tour” may mark a new chapter for Duff, but there was no attempt to distance herself from the music that made an entire generation fall in love with her. Instead, old and new existed comfortably alongside one another.
“Play With Fire” and “Sparks” picked up the pace, before “Future Tripping” pulled us firmly back into the present. On paper, two decades of music might feel disjointed; in this arena, you barely noticed.
During “With Love,” Duff invited fans onto the stage to perform the viral choreography with her, laughing as they danced their way through a now iconic dance routine. The arena was filled with fans dressed in glitter, butterfly clips and plenty of shimmer, including Duff herself, who wore crystal-embellished tops, silver dresses and metallic kitten-heel boots throughout the night.
At one point, Duff swapped sparkles for an oversized Paul McCartney t-shirt (because why not?) as she returned with an espresso martini in hand and a living-room set behind her. She settled in, took a sip, and for a moment, the O2 felt less like an arena and more like we had all somehow ended up at Duff’s house.
Then she played beloved throwback tracks like “Why Not” followed by newer songs like “Roommates.”
Her setlist spanned decades yet the thread between each era is unmistakable. Duff has always been refreshingly honest in her music, there’s just a little more life to write about now.
Last, but certainly never least, “This Is What Dreams Are Made Of” from Disney classic The Lizzie McGuire Movie began. Balloons fell from the ceiling, confetti shot into the air and the O2 sang it back word for word.
It would be easy to call it nostalgia, but that wouldn’t quite cover it. Some songs simply know how to have a second life.
It may be called “The Lucky Me Tour,” but on its opening night in London, it felt a lot more like lucky us.
photography. Isha Shah words. Sandy Aziz
Chris Olsen is a multimedia talent in the truest sense. He has made millions of followers laugh and cry on social media, taken to the stage as an opening act on Meghan Trainor’s Timeless Tour and now turned his life into a book.
In his memoir, ‘I Think My Therapist Hates Me’, the 28-year-old creator goes deeper, revisiting his childhood, coming out, addiction and treatment. Structured around recurring therapy sessions, the book makes space not only for its darkest chapters, but also for the humour, love and light woven throughout his story.
In conversation with Schön!, Olsen discusses meeting his younger self again, learning to let go of control and which musical he would choose if Broadway called tomorrow.
suit. Campillo shoes. Camper opposite shirt. Rag & Bone trousers. Kid Super
Thank you. I am excited that I can finally talk about it in this way. It feels like I finished it yesterday and years ago at the same time, and now it is finally here.
How did the idea for the book come about?
The idea for the book was very abstract initially. I remember thinking that I had been through quite a lot of things and would definitely write a book at some point, but I was not thinking I would be writing a memoir when I was 26.
I posted a video sharing a lot of the things I have been through in my life. It was kind of like a spoken-poem type of video, and the top comment was to write a book.
That was around the time I had been thinking about beginning something like that, and it was just the universe confirming that it was what I needed to do. From that moment to the book actually coming out, I could not have imagined getting here.
Most memoirs follow a clear beginning, middle and end, but you use therapy sessions as a way into your story. When did that structure take shape?
Those therapy-session interludes came as I was writing. Before I started, I did not have an idea of exactly how I was going to do it. I had never written a book before, and it was a very daunting, overwhelming thought and task. I was following my impulses on what would feel right to write about and how it would feel right to write it.
Because I knew I was going to be talking about so many therapy sessions, I thought that could be a cool vehicle to bring us back to the present, because we are talking about the past so much. It contextualises all the things I have gone through and how they still affect me today.
You had already shared parts of your past online and on podcasts. How did writing your life for a book feel different?
It was very different, and I was not prepared for that. I thought, ‘Well, I have told this story online, so writing it down for the book should be pretty easy.’ But a book involves so much more of the story than you realise you have been leaving out. You start thinking about your thoughts at the time and how you felt during each moment.
Because I was writing chronologically, I became much more connected to my childhood self and then my teenage self. I began to understand so many of the things I had gone through differently.
It made me reprocess a lot of them for the first time because I had not realised how little I had explored what I went through and how I felt at the time. It was very cathartic, but also very vulnerable, even before the book came out.
I am so grateful I did it, but nothing could have prepared me for how emotionally difficult it would be.
top + shoes. Ralph Lauren shorts. Umbro opposite jacket. Sportmax shirt + trousers. Rag & Bone
Which version of your younger self was the hardest to meet again?
Writing about myself at 13 was harder emotionally than I expected. I had just come out and was trying to figure out who I was while my mom went to rehab and my parents got divorced.
At the time, I was happy to have a bit more independence because no one was home, but looking back, I realised how lonely and scary that must have been. I have so much more compassion for that version of me now.
Revisiting the period when I was in active addiction was not as difficult because I had already processed so much of it in treatment. What was scary was putting it on the page and knowing that I was sharing all the colours of who I have been. It does not feel good to be the villain of the story, but we cannot get to where I am now without talking about my villain arc.
Was it difficult to return to those darker periods when our memories can sometimes protect us from them?
I think that is something I have maybe always had a bit of an easier time with, in terms of connecting with or sharing those things. That was such a theme of the treatment centre I went to: owning the things you have gone through and owning the way you were so you never go back to those things.
But I frequently get caught in talking about the hard parts of my life that I wrote about. Then I remember that most of the book is fun, funny and light-hearted, because my life was not just a story of trauma.
There are so many different colours to the story that make the darker parts so much more vulnerable. You have just seen a kid who has been happy his whole life growing up turn into someone who is having these kinds of issues.
There is so much love woven throughout the book, and I think that brings me so much joy too. Yes, there are really dark parts to it, but the dark parts are there because we found so much light.
If it were all dark, this book would not even be here.
Did writing your book offer you an understanding that had not emerged in therapy?
I was 19 or 20 when I was in rehab and around 25 to 27 when I was writing the book. By then, my brain was completely different.
I could look back with so much more nuance and understanding of who I was and who I am. I had more compassion, but that also made it more painful because I was able to look at the story and feel for that version of myself for the first time.
When I was in treatment, it was all still too close. The person I had been before entering the centre was only months behind me, so I looked back and thought, ‘Yeah, I sucked.
That guy has got to grow up.’ Now I have years of hindsight and understand more about why I reacted or acted out in certain ways. I am also so grateful that I had the support system that allowed me to reach a completely new understanding of it at 28.
The treatment centre used methods rooted in shame. How did that experience shape your ability to trust therapy again?
What is really interesting is that my therapist now is the same therapist I worked with at the treatment centre, and that is also where the title comes from. The centre had a very different philosophy and way of treating people, so thinking my therapist hated me would have been much more understandable then.
Now the title is more of a nod to that time and to the fear any of us can have that someone hates us. I think the word ‘therapist’ could be substituted for anything.
We have worked together since the treatment centre, and now we are undoing some of the ways I was therapised there. It is a unique situation because she no longer fully agrees with the way that place approached therapy.
Being able to hear her validate that shame was not the right way to make me understand something has been so healing. She is reading the book now, which is interesting.
I am so grateful she has been in my life. She has been my therapist for about nine years.
Here is to nine more.
What is the biggest lesson you learned in therapy?
Releasing control. I really like being in control of my environment and the things around me, but that can be a cause of my anxiety. It also makes it hard to have a public-facing job because you are never in control of the internet or what people think about you. You can never make everyone like you at the same time.
A lot of the therapy we have been doing over the past few years has been about accepting that I do not have power there, and that is okay. What I can control is what I decide to look at and respond to.
There have been times when I responded to negativity online, and I use those moments as data: it did not feel great, it did not look great and I did not like any part of it. Not saying anything may not always feel as cathartic, but I will never really regret it.
I will be working on releasing control for the rest of my life.
What do you hope readers take away from your story?
I hope they take away whatever they need. There are so many different things I have been through that each person will find a different point they relate to or resonate with. That is what is so beautiful about a life story. Maybe you had a coming-out story similar to mine, struggled with addiction or experienced hate online.
I am speaking about my human experience throughout the book. Even if someone cannot relate to the exact things I went through, they may know someone who can. I hope people feel seen and understood. I hope they know they are not alone and that if they have a bit of a villain arc or a dark moment in their life, there will always be another side to it.
On a lighter note, some people may not know that you also studied musical theatre. If Broadway called tomorrow, which show would you want to be in?
If I had to choose something that is currently playing in New York, I would go with Little Shop of Horrors. I love that show so much!
I have been a theatre kid my whole life. I just saw the Rocky Horror Show and thought, “Oh man, I will do anything.
Put me in.” Put me in a Sondheim show! Oklahoma by Rodgers and Hammerstein, but also something new and experimental.
Theatre is just so magical to me, and it always will be. But if I had to choose one, I would go with Little Shop.
You are only 28 and have already written a memoir. What might the next one be called in ten or twenty years?
Something that shows growth. Maybe I Know My Therapist Loves Me? Yes, I’ll go with that.
suit. Campillo shoes. Camper opposite jacket. Sportmax shirt + trousers. Rag & Bone
photography. Diego Villagra Motta fashion. Heidi Cannon talent. Chris Olsen grooming. Zeik Stevens @ Exclusive Artists using Kiehl’s production. Cassidy Cocke editor. Kelsey Barnes interview. David Baczyk