Over the last decade, Afrobeats has become a global phenomenon, bringing African music into the Western mainstream. There’s now an Afrobeats category at the MTV Video Music Awards, and performers like Burna Boy and Wizkid can sell out major venues in the US and Europe.
While many African artists have been able to ride the wave of the genre’s international popularity, some musicians are now pushing for global recognition beyond its confines.
“I won’t be mad if you call me an Afrobeats artist, but it’s only because it has become the yardstick for all Africans making global music,” Ghanaian singer King Promise told CNN’s Larry Madowo.
In recent years, popular music coming out of Africa has widely been classified as Afrobeats in the global soundscape, despite encompassing styles such as hip-hop, R&B, amapiano, dancehall, highlife, and more.
King Promise, whose sound blends R&B, highlife, and hip-hop, began releasing music in 2017 and rose to international fame in 2023 with his TikTok viral dance track “Terminator.” But the 29-year-old singer and songwriter doesn’t want to be boxed into a single sound.
“Afrobeats kind of serves as the umbrella which all of our music comes together (under),” he says. But he adds that the label has a crossover feel “to make it sound appealing not to just to people back home but to the rest of the world as well.”
“I don’t think that’s the best thing,” he argues.
“I make music that I love,” he explained. “If I feel like making R&B today, I make it. If I feel like making highlife I can make it. If I feel like making Afrobeats I can make it. It’s really about my direction.”
The roots of the Afrobeats genre can be traced back to Nigeria and music icon Fela Kuti, who is widely considered the architect of the similarly named genre, Afrobeat. Popularized in the 1970s, Afrobeat merged American jazz and funk with traditional Yoruba music. More recently, Afrobeat morphed into Afrobeats a looser label and catch all for all African music that took inspiration from the original Afrobeat sound.
Although King Promise understands the label from a marketing perspective in Western countries, he and other artists believe it robs them of their authenticity.
At the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards, South African Afropop and amapiano singer Tyla described her win for Best Afrobeats song “Water” as “bittersweet” in her acceptance speech.
“The global impact that ‘Water’ had on the world just proves that African music can be pop music too,” she said.
She added, “There’s a tendency to group all African artists under Afrobeats; it’s a thing, and even though Afrobeats has run things and has opened so many doors for us, African music is so diverse. It’s more than just Afrobeats.”
Nigerian superstars including Davido, Tems, Wizkid, and Burna Boy, have publicly distanced their music from the term Afrobeats.
Wizkid even took to social media in March to say that labeling his music Afrobeats was “ like saying every American artist makes rap.”
“It’s almost like artists are being stifled”
Earlier this year, Nigerian Afrosoul singer Simi told CNN: “In the West, they have different genres. You have country musicians singing country songs, and they have artists singing hip-hop songs.
“Here you will get put into the same crowd (Afrobeats), so the more street type of song is in the same crowd with someone that sings Afrosoul.”
She added the Afrobeats label makes no distinction between genres or sounds, leading to audiences to expect everyone to sound the same.
“It’s almost like artists are being stifled,” Simi explained.
“You have to be a certain kind of artist before people respect you or give you the kind of accolades that you know you deserve.
“Someone like Adele is not having this kind of struggle.”
King Promise argues that although the Afrobeats sound has evolved over the years with the fusion of new sounds, the foundational element of the music remains the same: African tradition music. He says that will remain a mainstay in popular music.
“Just like we have hip-hop that stood the test of time, Afrobeats as a representation of our music as Africans on a global scale, it’s locking horns with the biggest, standing its ground, and it’s only getting better,” he said.
