Aminé talks latest single and upcoming album on Apple Music’s New Music Daily Radio

Aminé joins Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1 to celebrate the release of his latest single, ‘Arc de Triomphe’ from his third studio album, ’13 Months of Sunshine’, dropping on May 16. In the conversation, Aminé discusses the inspiration behind his new song and the meaning of his upcoming album title.

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Aminé tells Apple Music how The Streets influenced his new song, ‘Arc de Triomphe’

So, I got the beat played for me by Lido like two or three years ago when we were working on ‘2.5’ and I didn’t know much about The Streets at that point. I grew up in Portland. A lot of the shit that I grew up on was a lot of West Coast Rap, and kind of a lot of grime shit that I listened to, but I didn’t know the backstory behind The Streets. And as Lido showed it to me, I just started listening to ‘Has it Come To This’, ‘Turn the Page’, and ‘Take Me As I Am’. Just all the legendary tracks that everyone gravitated towards too, and it made me realise that this dude is incredible. I had to match how crazy he went and try to at least get an ounce of that swag when I was doing ‘Arc de Triomphe’.

Aminé tells Apple Music about the meaning behind the album title, ’13 Months of Sunshine’

I grew up in an Ethiopian household. I’m Eritrean and Ethiopian, but I grew up in this Ethiopian household, always seeing these tourism posters growing up, always saying, “13 months of sunshine.” Every kid in the diaspora who lives in America who’s Ethiopian knows about these posters. It’s kind of like if you know kind of thing. And that title got made in like the 1970s promoting people to come to Ethiopia, just as the tourism slogan in it.

Tourism slogans are literally made to change the perspective of the way you see something. You know what mean? To attract you to come to them. And I loved how this album, for me, musically, it’s just a different era. It’s just a different sound and felt like this is the same thing I want to do slogan wise for myself. It feels like something I want to change the perspective to and kind of gravitate people towards the music and the true feelings I have for myself. The way that title also for me is just so nostalgic. It just made me feel like this is something my parents are going to be happy to see. I’m just really excited to just let the world hear the whole thing as a whole and hear a lot of the Ethiopian influence in the music. Some of it is so left and not the way you’d expect me to use that influence, which I love doing, because I feel like it’s always really easy to just sample an Ethiopian Jazz song, you know what I mean? And rap some bars over it and go crazy, which I would love to do. It’s so much to choose from.

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