Afrobeats and The Global Music Scene Today

Genres in music are born through the marriage of time and cultures. These genres exist basically as a division for identification in music consumerism. In music, there are over 200+ genres with popular, primary and sub categories. Some primary and popular genres include pop, hip-hop, reggae, rhythm and blues, country and much recently, with perpetual rise, Afrobeats.

Afrobeat or Afrobeats? Understanding the genre

One thing is true of both terms: They are musical genres with origins in West Africa. The distinction between both is as important as the elements they are characterized by and their impact on the culture.

Afrobeat is a genre birthed by Nigerian music icon Fela Anikulapo Kuti in the 60s-70s. It is characterized by the fusion of activism with various sound influences in highlife, jazz, funk etc. performed in a manner that is of pedigree, live and ritualistic (often performed live with a band, set of dancers dressed a particular way performing a particular routine and in the same location, except times abroad where only the location is altered.)

Afrobeats on the other hand is a genre rooted in sound influences of pop, hip hop and rap music that merges African music in a modern-contemporary manner. It can be viewed as a mutation of the Afrobeat genre but it sits on the opposite side of the former’s local-traditional melodies yet maintains lingo and a beat pattern that’s indigenous to the artists.

Beginnings, growth and propagators

In its earlier days, Afrobeats wasn’t nearly defined with clarity and mostly existed as an underground genre circulated by DJs in hotspots around certain communities. In London, DJ Abrantee is credited as the man who gave the name “Afrobeats” after launching his 2011 Choice radio show. To him, he saw it as an umbrella term for the kind of music he had been playing to his African audience in search of an alternative to British urban music. In his words, the big difference is that Afrobeats is “intertwined…and there's more of a young feel to it.”

What was the young feel about the genre? Asides the upbeat tempo, African artists were not stopping in churning out their sounds. In 2010, Nigerian singer-songwriter D’Banj, released Mr Endowed, a song which grew in popularity and by the next year, saw a remix featuring Snoop Dogg. In 2012, D’Banj dropped his chart-topping single Oliver Twist along with a music video which saw cameos from his then label mates Kanye West, Big Sean, Pusha T etc. The Don Jazzy produced record went on to become one of the biggest songs in Afrobeats history and shifted the gaze of the continent’s music landscape.

In the same vein, Ghanaian-British singer-songwriter Fuse ODG released Azonto in 2011, a song centered on the movements behind a dance he learned while in Ghana. This song was followed by Antenna which premiered on BBC Radio 1Xtra in 2012. Both songs were massive hits of their time which further contributed to the conversation around the Afrobeats genre and reinforced the connection between Africa and the wider diaspora.

The growth of afrobeats has led to it being the catchphrase for popular music originating from Africa. With the growth of the internet and press coverage, African artists have started describing their sound confidently as “Afrobeats”. And like every other genre, with more artists defining their sounds, the genre has birthed subgenres like Afropop, Afrofusion, Afrorave - which some music insiders and enthusiasts would argue are ‘replacement names’  to the primary genre but in fact speak to the genre.

The artists, protagonists and now

Afrobeats has been waiting a while for its global moment. Before the spotlight, artists were doing work underground creating music and releasing projects with little to sizeable budgets. In the last 7 years, the undisputed genre has taken the reins as one of the most sought after genres of the decade.

Foreign artists from across the globe have leaned into creating music with protagonists of the genre. In 2016, Drake featured Nigerian singer and songwriter Wizkid music on his hit record, One Dance which sold over 12 million copies and was named by Billboard as the Song of the Summer in its year of release. This feature came after the international breakout of Wizkid’s single Ojuelegba across the UK and some parts of the US.

The Drake feature further propelled Wizkid’s artistry especially in the US market and in turn bought more eyes on the genre and the continent. Other foreign artists across genres have since collaborated with Afrobeats artists as featured or primary artists. Some popular ones include Tiwa Savage ft Brandy on Somebody’s Son, Fireboy DML ft Ed Sheeran on Peru, Dave ft Burna Boy on Location as well as Beyonce’s 14-track project Black is King which featured various Afrobeats artists.

This defines the current state of the genre. Today, Afrobeats artists have found bigger audiences internationally. They are performing at global festivals (see Coachella’s 2023 lineup), headlining solo concerts in prime capacity (see the O2 Arena and Madison Square Garden), collaborating with chart topping artists and DJs across the globe, winning awards in international categories (see BET, Grammys), being hosted on popular TV shows (see The Daily Show, Jimmy Fallon) and even signing joint and exclusive deals with record labels.

The rise of Afrobeats has altered conventions in the global music industry especially where it concerns data, charts and rankings. For the first time ever, Billboard and Afronation (an annual three-day music festival) collaborated to go live with a 50-position chart known as the Billboard U.S Afrobeats Songs Chart on March 29, 2022. This chart which has become a metric across music players was created to rank the most popular afrobeats songs across the US. That’s how big afrobeats has gotten - getting a chart of its own on Billboard after Afrobeats artists have recorded millions of streams across the US.

For Africans, Afrobeats exists both as a cultural movement and a genre. For the rest of the world, Afrobeats is all about the shock factor. It sounds authentic and different while maintaining its roots in percussion beats like any authentic African music. The artists creating under the genre paved their own way to international success and have defined sub-Saharan African contemporary music (that's on cultural evolution in music). I believe one can refer to this as another definition of “Africa to the world”.