Ayọ

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Ayọ (born as Joy Olasunmibo Ogunmakin, 14 September 1980) is a Nigerian-German singer-songwriter and actress. She uses the Yoruba translation Ayọ or Ayo. of her first name Joy. Her debut album Joyful, which was first released in 2006, reached Double-Platinum status in France, Platinum in Germany and Poland, Gold status in Switzerland and Italy and Greece. The album was released in the United States on 20 November 2007 by Interscope Records. Ayọ was born in Frechen near Cologne, Germany. She has a son, Nile, who was born in late 2005 and a daughter, Billie-Eve, born July 2010, with the Sierra Leonian-German reggae singer Patrice, from whom she is now separated. In March 2017, her third child, Jimi-Julius, was born. At the end of 2007, she moved with her family to the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan in New York City. At present, she lives in Brooklyn, New York with her children. Then-president of UNICEF France, Jacques Hintzy, announced on 4 February 2009 that the singer was named patron of UNICEF to promote the right to education for all children in the world. The French production company MK2 produced the film Ayo Joy, a 90-minute documentary about the singer and her life, in 2009. The film was directed by Raphaël Duroy. Early years Ayọ was born near Cologne, Germany as the fourth child of a Nigerian father and a German-Sinti mother. She lived for a short time in Nigeria as a baby.[citation needed] She has one sister and two brothers. When she was about s...