HUGEL is the French DJ and producer who turned Mediterranean and Latin grooves into global chart house — and, more recently, threw his weight behind the Afro house wave. Born Florent Hugel in Marseille in 1987, he’s the man behind “Morenita,” the track widely credited with popularising Latin house, and the 2024 crossover smash “I Adore You.” With over a billion streams and a stack of gold and platinum records, he sits in a rare spot: a genuine club producer who also makes hits. Here’s how he got there, and where he’s heading now.
From Marseille Vinyl to Hitmaker
Hugel grew up in Marseille, on France’s Mediterranean coast, raised on his mother’s funk, disco and soul records. He started DJing on vinyl at 16, shaped as much by house and techno pioneers like Carl Cox and Laurent Garnier as by Daft Punk and David Guetta — a mix of underground craft and pop instinct that still defines him.
He began producing in 2005, first in the EDM duo KitSch 2.0 and the hip-hop project Hipshaker, before going solo. His first real traction came in 2015 with “Coming Home,” followed by a 2017 collaboration with Robin Schulz, “I Believe I’m Fine,” which went gold in Germany. He was learning, in public, how to turn a groove into a record people remember.
Morenita and the Latin House Breakthrough
The turning point was rhythm. In 2018 his remix of El Profesor’s “Bella Ciao” became a viral hit, racking up hundreds of millions of streams. Then came “Morenita” — a track built on Mediterranean warmth and South American percussion over a four-to-the-floor house pulse, and the record most people point to as kick-starting the modern Latin house boom.
That fusion — sunlit, percussive, vocal-led but club-functional — became his signature. It’s dance-pop with real groove underneath, and it gave him a lane that was commercially huge without being disposable.
The Crossover Machine
Hugel has always worked both sides of the line between club and chart. He’s collaborated with or remixed the likes of David Guetta, J Balvin, Robin Schulz, Post Malone and Charlie Puth, and his 2024 single “I Adore You,” with Topic and Arash, was a genuine global hit. He also runs his own label, Make The Girls Dance Records, and has released through respected house institutions like Defected and Toolroom — a reminder that the pop reach is built on real dancefloor credibility.
The Afro House Pivot
Since 2025, Hugel has leaned hard into Afro house — the sound currently dominating global dancefloors. His single “Jamaican (Bam Bam)” with Solto, released through the influential MoBlack and his own label in late 2025, folded Afro house percussion into his crossover formula, and his album Twenty One pushed further in that direction. It’s a natural move: the same instinct for warm, percussive, vocal-driven grooves that made “Morenita” work translates directly to Afro house.
It also puts him among the names driving the genre’s mainstream crossover — see our guide to Afro house, explained, for the wider movement he’s now part of. Where South African originators built the foundation, producers like Hugel are carrying the sound to festival main stages and pop charts.
Why He Matters
Hugel’s real skill isn’t any single genre — it’s spotting a rhythm on the rise and turning it into something that works on both a terrace and the radio. He did it with Latin house, and he’s doing it again with Afro house. In a scene that often forces a choice between underground credibility and commercial reach, he’s spent two decades proving you can have both.
Want to hear the sounds HUGEL is drawing from? Tune into Doubleclap Radio for 24/7 house and Afro house selected by real DJs — free on iOS and Android — and follow along for more artist stories from across the scene.