HUGEL - Biography and discography, all albums and songs

HUGEL is the stage name of French DJ, music producer, and remixer Florent Hugel, born on December 4, 1987, in Marseille. His career has passed through several distinctly different phases: early electro house and EDM, pop collaborations and remixes, an international breakthrough with Bella Ciao, and later a shift toward Latin house, Afro house, and percussion-driven club music. HUGEL’s best-known works include Bella Ciao (HUGEL Remix), Morenita, Marianela (Qué Pasa), Tra Tra, I Adore You, and Jamaican (Bam Bam). He also founded his own label, Make The Girls Dance Records, and turned the name into an international series of club events.

One of the most striking aspects of HUGEL’s career is his ability to change musical direction several times without having to start over. His first major success came in the European pop and dance market, but his most distinctive sound developed considerably later — after the producer began focusing on Latin house, Afro-Latin percussion, and a more direct kind of club energy. HUGEL himself has described this period not as an attempt to fit a particular genre label, but as a search for rhythms that physically work on the dancefloor.

Marseille, a family record collection, and his first experiences as a DJ

HUGEL grew up in Marseille — a port city where European, Mediterranean, North African, and other musical cultures constantly intersect. According to the musician, one of the main sources of his early musical education was his mother: funk, disco, soul, and jazz were regularly played at home. Later, he discovered hip-hop and R&B on his own and even recorded mixtapes from the radio that he sold to classmates.

Florent became interested in electronic music during his teenage years. At around sixteen, he began learning to DJ with vinyl. Among his major influences from that period, HUGEL has named Carl Cox, Laurent Garnier, Daft Punk, and David Guetta. A performance by Carl Cox at Marseille club Bazar left an especially strong impression on him: HUGEL recalled that he knew almost none of the tracks being played, yet danced continuously for several hours and understood for the first time the hypnotic power of electronic club music.

This early combination of interests later became fundamental to his production style. Funk and disco gave him an instinct for groove, hip-hop sparked an interest in vocal fragments and recognizable source material, while Marseille’s club culture shaped his view of a track primarily as music that must work in front of a live audience.

KitSch 2.0, Hipshaker, and the years before his solo career

HUGEL began working professionally in music production around 2005. Before launching his solo project, he worked in several different formats. Together with Alexandre Borde, Florent was part of the electronic duo KitSch 2.0, which released electro house tracks and remixes; at the same time, he was involved in hip-hop production through the Hipshaker project. KitSch 2.0 releases were still appearing in the early 2010s, several years before the first notable records under the HUGEL name.

This period is important for understanding what followed: HUGEL did not suddenly appear as a new artist after one successful remix. By the time of his international breakthrough, he already had around a decade of experience producing electronic music, working with other artists, and operating within an evolving European club industry.

Coming Home and the first solo successes

In 2015, HUGEL released one of his first key solo singles, Coming Home, featuring vocals by Jimmy Hennessy. The track became his first release to enter the official German singles chart, where it reached number 80. For the Marseille-based artist, the German-speaking market became one of the main centers of his commercial growth for several years.

In 2016, he followed it with Where We Belong featuring British singer Jasmine Thompson, while an important next step came through collaboration with Robin Schulz. Their 2017 single I Believe I'm Fine reached number 29 in Germany and spent twenty-four weeks in the German Top 100. HUGEL is credited among the song’s writers and producers.

During the same period, he was also highly active as a remixer. Among his most notable works from the second half of the 2010s was his version of Mi Gente by J Balvin and Willy William, followed later by reworks of material by Robin Schulz, Topic, Sigala, and other artists. Remixing allowed HUGEL to build his own name while continuing to work within commercial production.

Bella Ciao — the first international breakthrough

The turning point came with the version of Bella Ciao that HUGEL produced for the El Profesor project in 2018. By then, the Italian song was experiencing a new wave of popularity thanks to the Spanish series La Casa de Papel, and HUGEL transferred the familiar melody into a contemporary club format. The remix was officially released in April 2018.

Its commercial performance far exceeded that of his earlier solo records. In Germany, Bella Ciao (HUGEL Remix) reached number 2, spent 39 weeks on the chart, and finished number 6 on Germany’s year-end singles ranking for 2018. This was the release that first transformed HUGEL from a producer known within the European dance scene into an artist with a large international audience.

The period after Bella Ciao, however, became transitional for HUGEL. He continued releasing records aimed at the pop market — including WTF with British singer Amber Van Day, which also charted — but gradually returned more strongly to music designed primarily for clubs. In the long run, this shift proved more important than the success of Bella Ciao itself: rather than repeatedly reproducing a commercial-hit formula, HUGEL began developing a different musical language.

Ibiza and a change of direction

Ibiza had a major influence on the next stage of his career. HUGEL lived on the island and directly connected its environment with his growing interest in Spanish-language, Latin, and percussion-driven dance music. During the first pandemic lockdown in 2020, he found himself in his Ibiza apartment and continued working on material intended for the eventual return of clubs. One of the tracks created during that period became Morenita.

The producer later described this change as a release from the constant need to make music for radio. Drums, groove, and Latin rhythms became the center of his new tracks. This material was much closer to what HUGEL wanted to play in his own DJ sets than some of his commercially oriented releases from the late 2010s.

Morenita and the development of HUGEL’s Latin house sound

On June 25, 2021, HUGEL and Cumbiafrica released Morenita through Cr2 Records. In its club version, it is a track running for more than six minutes, built around dense percussion, vocals, and continuous rhythmic movement. Morenita became the starting point for the sound that would later become particularly closely associated with HUGEL’s name.

Its success was especially visible within the professional club market: Morenita spent three weeks at number one on Beatport’s house chart and reached number five on the store’s overall ranking. The track received long-term support from DJs and radio stations and was followed by a series of remixes.

Calling HUGEL the creator of Latin house would be historically inaccurate: Latin influences had existed in house music long before his career. It is more accurate to say that Morenita helped establish him as one of the most visible representatives of the new wave of Latin house in the early 2020s. He combined Latin American and Caribbean percussion aesthetics with modern tech house and festival-scale production, then continued developing the formula through subsequent releases. HUGEL himself has described his sound as a blend of Afro house and tech house while emphasizing that drums remain the decisive element.

Marianela, Aguila, and Tra Tra

After Morenita, the Latin direction stopped being a one-release experiment. In 2022 came La Candela Viva with Jude & Frank and Twolate, Aguila with Westend and Cumbiafrica, and Marianela (Qué Pasa), recorded by HUGEL with Italian duo Merk & Kremont and Dominican artist Lirico En La Casa. In these tracks, Spanish-language vocal phrases, Afro-Latin percussion, and club bass became a consistent part of his catalog.

Another important single was Tra Tra with Canadian DJ BLOND:ISH and Dominican artist Nfasis. The track reached number one on Beatport, and in an interview about the release, HUGEL directly connected this new phase of his music with Latin house and a combination of Afro house and tech house. In that sense, the early 2020s marked the point when his musical identity fully separated from the Bella Ciao period.

Make The Girls Dance Records

In 2023, HUGEL founded his own label, Make The Girls Dance Records. The project was created not only as a home for his own singles: one of its stated goals was to promote lesser-known producers and music that HUGEL could directly use in his sets. Gradually, the name developed a catalog centered on Latin house, Afro house, tech house, and related styles.

Later, Make The Girls Dance also evolved into a standalone event brand. In this way, HUGEL followed a path common among major club DJs: his own label became simultaneously a tool for discovering new music, part of his touring identity, and a way to control the release of a significant share of his own material.

2024: from La Verdolaga to I Adore You

In 2024, HUGEL’s range expanded significantly. Through Defected, he released La Verdolaga featuring vocals by celebrated Colombian singer Totó La Momposina. For HUGEL, it marked his debut on one of Britain’s most famous house labels while continuing his engagement with Latin American musical heritage. Other notable releases from the same period included Andalucia, CORAÇAO, Forever with Diplo, Malou, and Yuna, and a new version of the classic It Feels So Good with Matt Sassari and Sonique.

The biggest international hit of this phase became I Adore You, recorded with German producer Topic, Iranian-Swedish artist Arash, and British vocalist Daecolm. The original foundation emerged during a studio session involving Topic, Daecolm, A7S, and Arash. HUGEL heard the vocal through a mutual contact and completely reworked the production toward Afro house. According to him, after finishing an initial version he returned to the project again, adding more continuous percussion so that the track would work better in clubs.

HUGEL first tested the audience response directly during a performance in Germany: after seeing large numbers of people trying to identify the unknown track through Shazam, he realized its potential. I Adore You subsequently became one of the biggest crossover hits of his career. In the UK, it reached number 69 on the main singles chart and number 17 on the dance chart, while Billboard included it in its editorial list of the best dance tracks of 2024.

In November, an expanded version of the project appeared featuring J Balvin and Ellie Goulding, while retaining Topic, Arash, and Daecolm on the recording. A track originally created as Afro house had therefore crossed into global pop and the Latin music market.

Why HUGEL works with both Latin house and Afro house

It is difficult to divide HUGEL’s later music into two rigid categories. Some tracks are dominated by Latin American vocal and percussion elements, others sit much closer to Afro house, while still others retain a tech house foundation. HUGEL himself does not consider these boundaries particularly important: in his description, the character of the drums and the feeling of continuous movement on the dancefloor matter more.

For this reason, Latin house is the most accurate description of the central part of his catalog after Morenita, but not of his entire output. In his sets and studio work, HUGEL mixes Latin house, Afro house, and tech house, while occasionally returning to disco, pop, R&B, or hip-hop. His ability to maintain a recognizable rhythmic signature across different commercial and club formats has become one of the reasons for the durability of his career. Hï Ibiza also officially describes his sets as a combination of Latin house, Afro house, and tech house.

Ibiza: from guest DJ to his own residency

Ibiza remained more than simply a touring destination for HUGEL; it became one of the main centers of his musical development. He performed at some of the island’s biggest clubs, including Ushuaïa and Pacha, and after the growth of his own brand gained the opportunity to establish a dedicated residency.

In the summer of 2025, his residency HUGEL Presents Make The Girls Dance launched at Hï Ibiza. Unlike a standard guest appearance, HUGEL was given the Theatre — the club’s main room — for a series of weekly Thursday events. The project proved successful enough to return the following season in an expanded format.

In 2026, Make The Girls Dance took place at Hï Ibiza every week from June through September, with HUGEL personally shaping the guest lineup around his own musical concept. Diplo, AMÉMÉ, Moojo, Crusy, Oscar G, and other artists appeared on the program. The long-running residency confirmed HUGEL’s transition from an artist with individual successful singles into a DJ capable of sustaining his own international club brand.

Think Of Me, Loosen Up, and a new level of collaborations

After I Adore You, HUGEL increasingly began combining club music with R&B and pop vocals. In 2025, he released Think Of Me with David Guetta, Kehlani, and Daecolm. Loosen Up, created with Dawty and vocalist Preston Harris, follows a similar direction, combining an Afro house groove with R&B delivery and reggaeton rhythms.

Notably, Make The Girls Dance also used Loosen Up for an open remix competition, with the winner offered an official release on the label. The initiative closely reflected the original concept behind HUGEL’s company — using an already established audience as a way to discover new producers.

Jamaican (Bam Bam)

Another major release was Jamaican (Bam Bam) with French producer SOLTO. The track is based on musical material associated with the legendary Bam Bam by Jamaican artist Sister Nancy, but HUGEL and SOLTO transferred it into an Afro house context with heavy percussion and club bass. Released in late 2025, it continued HUGEL’s characteristic practice of reinterpreting recognizable musical heritage within contemporary dance production.

The track remained popular into the following season, becoming one of the notable records in his performances and appearing on his debut album. It also entered national charts in several European countries and the Billboard Global 200.

Twenty One — a debut album after two decades of work

Despite a large number of singles and a career spanning many years, HUGEL went for a long time without releasing a full-length solo studio album. That changed on June 26, 2026, when his debut album Twenty One was released through Make The Girls Dance Records. The project brought together house, Afro house, Latin house, hip-hop, and R&B and reached far beyond his usual club-focused discography.

The guest list demonstrates the scale of the album’s crossover concept. Different tracks featured Snoop Dogg, Big Sean, YoungBoy Never Broke Again, French Montana, Scott Storch, David Guetta, Ultra Naté, Tokischa, Roy Woods, Donel, and other artists. For HUGEL, working with some of these musicians had personal significance: he noted that he had listened to several of them when he was younger, long before he ever had the opportunity to work with them within the same studio ecosystem.

Before the album, he released Movin' To The Sun with Imael Angel and Ultra Naté, Ron Y Coco with Barbara Doza and Flagrant Drvms, and Body Drop with Big Sean and Scott Storch. The album itself also includes Shine with David Guetta, French Montana, and Aidan Martin, 150 Bands with YoungBoy Never Broke Again and AryaXO, and other collaborations.

Twenty One did not abandon HUGEL’s club foundation, but it showed how his music could exist beyond it. Instead of building an album from nearly interchangeable DJ tools, he focused on vocalists, rappers, and shorter song structures while preserving the percussion-based framework developed during the Morenita and I Adore You period.

Hip-hop as a hidden thread throughout his career

The presence of rappers on Twenty One becomes less surprising when HUGEL’s early Hipshaker project and his teenage interest in hip-hop are taken into account. In 2026, this connection became especially clear: in addition to Big Sean and YoungBoy Never Broke Again, he recorded One Night with French Montana and Max B, reworking their material into Afro-Latin house. HUGEL has said that French Montana was among the artists he followed when he was still a young musician in France.

His later crossover phase therefore does not represent a complete change of creative interests. Rather, HUGEL returned to a musical culture he had already worked with before his solo dance career, but now through the language of house developed over two decades of production.

How HUGEL’s sound works

In HUGEL’s most characteristic productions, a track is usually built around a rhythmic pattern rather than complex harmony. Percussion, bass, and a short vocal phrase create a recognizable loop, after which the arrangement gradually introduces or removes elements. This method works particularly well for extended DJ mixing: the track remains functional in a club, while the vocal or sample can make it accessible to audiences outside the house scene.

A second characteristic technique is the use of culturally recognizable source material. Bella Ciao, It Feels So Good, and Jamaican (Bam Bam) come from completely different eras and genres, but the basic principle is similar: HUGEL does not attempt to reconstruct the original arrangement. Instead, he isolates a recognizable musical idea and places it within his own rhythmic system. At the same time, such records sit alongside entirely original tracks such as Morenita or I Adore You.

Finally, a substantial part of his later style is based on the intersection of Latin and African rhythmic traditions. This is why the same HUGEL track may be categorized in different catalogs as house, Afro house, Latin house, or tech house. The artist himself treats these boundaries freely, preferring to focus on how convincingly a track works within a DJ set.

HUGEL discography

Studio albums:

• Twenty One — 2026, Make The Girls Dance Records.

Twenty One became HUGEL’s first full-length studio album after more than twenty years of working with electronic music.

Selected key singles and collaborations:

• Coming Home — feat. Jimmy Hennessy, 2015;
• Where We Belong — with Jasmine Thompson, 2016;
• I Believe I'm Fine — with Robin Schulz, 2017;
• WTF — feat. Amber Van Day, 2018;
• Mamma Mia — feat. Amber Van Day, 2019;
• Morenita — with Cumbiafrica, 2021;
• La Candela Viva — with Jude & Frank and Twolate, 2022;
• Aguila — with Westend feat. Cumbiafrica, 2022;
• Tra Tra — with BLOND:ISH feat. Nfasis, 2022;
• Marianela (Qué Pasa) — with Merk & Kremont and Lirico En La Casa, 2022;
• Andalucia — with GROSSOMODDO, 2024;
• La Verdolaga — feat. Totó La Momposina, 2024;
• Forever — with Diplo feat. Malou & Yuna, 2024;
• It Feels So Good — with Matt Sassari feat. Sonique, 2024;
• I Adore You — with Topic and Arash feat. Daecolm, 2024;
• Think Of Me — with David Guetta, Kehlani, and Daecolm, 2025;
• Loosen Up — with Dawty feat. Preston Harris, 2025;
• Jamaican (Bam Bam) — with SOLTO, 2025;
• Movin' To The Sun — with Imael Angel and Ultra Naté, 2026;
• One Night — with French Montana and Max B, 2026;
• Body Drop — with Big Sean and Scott Storch, 2026.

HUGEL’s catalog is considerably broader than this list and consists primarily of singles, collaborations, and remixes, reflecting his long-standing focus on DJ and club culture.

Selected remixes

• J Balvin & Willy William — Mi Gente (HUGEL Remix) — 2017;
• El Profesor — Bella Ciao (HUGEL Remix) — 2018;
• El Profesor feat. Laura White — Ce Soir? (HUGEL Remix) — 2018;
• Topic feat. A7S — Breaking Me (HUGEL Remix) — 2020;
• Sigala feat. Ella Henderson — We Got Love (HUGEL Remix) — 2020;
• Regard & RAYE — Secrets (HUGEL Remix) — 2020;
• Muni Long — Made For Me (HUGEL Dance Remix) — 2024.

Remixes occupy an important place in HUGEL’s career: it was the Bella Ciao remix that gave him his first mass international breakthrough, while his subsequent growth relied primarily on original material and collaborative recordings.

HUGEL’s place in the contemporary house scene

HUGEL’s career is particularly interesting because his most significant influence on club music did not emerge at the beginning of his professional path. Around fifteen years passed between his first production work in the mid-2000s and Morenita, while even more time separated the debut of KitSch 2.0 from his own album Twenty One. During that period, mainstream EDM, deep house, tech house, and the entire distribution model of electronic music all changed.

HUGEL managed to move through those changes without becoming tied to a single era. Bella Ciao gave him mass recognition through a remix, but Morenita effectively gave him a second career within the contemporary house scene. Marianela, Tra Tra, and other tracks then transformed Latin rhythms from an isolated experiment into a consistent production language, while I Adore You demonstrated that the same language could also work as an international pop record.

At the same time, his own label, the Make The Girls Dance event series, and the Hï Ibiza residency turned HUGEL into more than simply the producer of in-demand tracks. He gained the ability to shape an environment around his own music — selecting producers, releasing their records, and building club programs in which Latin house, Afro house, and tech house coexist as parts of one contemporary dance culture.

This evolution best defines HUGEL’s place in electronic music: from a Marseille teenager who discovered the hypnotic power of DJing at a Carl Cox performance, through European EDM and the global success of Bella Ciao, to a distinctive rhythmic identity, an international label, and music that connects club traditions from different regions. His catalog has changed together with the dance scene, but the central idea has remained the same — above all, a track has to make the dancefloor move.