Call Wizkid an Afrobeat artist in front of a Fela fan and you will get a lecture. The missing letter matters.
Afrobeat, without the s, is the genre Fela Anikulapo Kuti created in Lagos from the late 1960s with his drummer, Tony Allen. Afrobeats, with the s, is the broad label that took hold in Britain in the early 2010s for the new pop music coming from Nigeria and Ghana. They are related, but they are not the same thing.
Afrobeat
Fela blended highlife, jazz, James Brown’s funk and Yoruba rhythms. Tony Allen’s drumming, complex and loose, drove the sound. Songs were long, often more than ten minutes, with big horn sections, interlocking guitars, call and response vocals and extended instrumental passages before Fela began to sing.
The lyrics were political. Fela attacked military governments, corruption, colonial mentality and police brutality in songs such as “Zombie”, “Water No Get Enemy” and “Coffin for Head of State”. Afrobeat was protest music as much as dance music.
Fela’s sons Femi and Seun Kuti, and bands around the world such as Antibalas in New York, keep the style alive.
Afrobeats
Afrobeats emerged as a name in the United Kingdom around 2011. DJ Abrantee, a British-Ghanaian radio DJ, is widely credited with popularising the term for the Nigerian and Ghanaian pop he was playing. It covers a wide range of sounds: hiplife, Naija pop, dancehall influences, R&B and later amapiano touches.
Afrobeats songs are usually radio length, built on programmed beats, with catchy hooks and themes of love, dancing, money and celebration. Artists such as Wizkid, Davido, Burna Boy, Tiwa Savage, Tems, Rema and Ghana’s Sarkodie and Stonebwoy are associated with it.
The connection
Many Afrobeats artists cite Fela as an influence. Burna Boy, whose grandfather Benson Idonije was Fela’s first manager, draws openly on Afrobeat. Wizkid has sampled and referenced Fela. The lines blur at the edges.
Why the distinction matters
For many fans of Fela, calling pop music “Afrobeat” erases what made the original radical. For others, the labels are marketing categories. Some artists reject “Afrobeats” altogether: Burna Boy has described his music as “Afrofusion”.
The quick test
If the song runs twelve minutes, features a horn section and attacks the government, it is probably Afrobeat. If it runs three minutes and fills a club in London, it is probably Afrobeats.
Both came from Lagos. Only one of them brought soldiers to burn down its creator’s home.
