From 1998, Degiheugi started immersing himself in vinyl records and wearing them on his turntables as part of a rap formation. In 2001, he acquires his first sampler and begins producing. The classic hip-hop scene quickly felt too narrow to accommodate the constant flow of ideas flooding his right hemisphere. A sound collector and explorer of the perfect sample, Degiheugi began to unearth raw gems lying dormant beneath the dust of vinyls marking the past decades. He reinvented the art of merging these sonic particles to give them a second life.
A pioneer of using royalty-free licenses and benefiting from the rise of streaming in France in the early 2000s, his vision of shared music led him to create his own label, Endless Smile, in 2015, alongside the release of his fourth album by the same name.
The albums kept coming, all featuring 5-star collaborations (Chill Bump, Ceschi, Astronautalis, ASM, Hugo Kant...) and beats with masterful grooves. These brilliant patchworks expanded the realms of trip-hop, revealing a pure sound filled with soul, electronic melancholy, and melodic flashes.
With over 35 million streams across platforms, Degiheugi’s compositions reach an international audience, blending orchestral sounds drawn from the fabulous repertoire of the '60s and '70s with soul-funk samples, fragments of forgotten songs, tropical samba bursts, romantic string showers, and swirling flutes that easily flirt with wah-wah guitars, jazzy double basses, and hip- hop beats.
After 10 albums and 3 EPs, including a recent remix album featuring 13 beatmakers from various scenes and generations (The Architect, DJ Vadim, Scratch Bandits Crew, ProleteR, Souleance, Mounika...), followed by an orchestral project captured on record, the beatmaker reconnects with his roots and first love—hip-hop—with the upcoming release of a new project, Everything’s Fine.
