This is not the first relative of a country’s leader to launch a music career (see Uzbekistan’s Googoosha). Patience Dabany (also known as Joséphine Bongo) was President Omar Bongo’s second wife, and is the mother to Ali Bongo, the current president. She divorced Omar Bongo in 1987 and then built her musical career under this new name. (Omar Bongo later remarried a third wife 30 years younger than him.)

The marital drama of the Bongos didn’t just stay with the older generation – when Ali Bongo assumed office in 2009, his estranged (but not divorced) wife Inge was living on food stamps in California.