Born in Dakar, Senegal, the son of a Senegalese high official and member of the Lebou ethnic group, Diop left Senegal in the 1970s to study engineering in Paris, but once there turned to music, joining a fellow Senegalese musician, Umbañ U Kset, in forming the band West African Cosmos.
Diop left the band in 1979 to start a solo career, and over the next decade achieved some small success, particularly in partnerships with singer Marie-France Anglade of Black heritage,[1] and jazz saxophonist Yasuaki Shimizu.
It was not until the early 1990s that his career began to take off, with the success of his first album, the soundtrack to the film Hyenes (which had been directed by his brother, Djibril Diop Mambety).
[citation needed] Diop lives in Paris and writes much of his lyrics in French.
"Defal Lu Wor," his Wolof language cover of the Talking Heads song "Once in a Lifetime", was included in a "special markets" CD, World is Africa, produced by Universal Music for Starbucks.