Nigerian superstar, Davido has expressed his desire to rather classify his music as part of an Afrofusion genre rather than Afrobeats.
Fela Kuti was the original pioneer of the music known as afrobeat. However, African music is now referred to as Afrobeats with all African artiste classified under the Afrobeats umbrella irrespective of their music styles.
African artists are classified as Afrobeats if they sing pure R&B and sound like SZA or Summerwalker.
Even if an African rapper has a Drake-like flow, they are still classified as Afrobeats.
However, speaking in an interview with Business Untitled Podcast, the ‘Unavailable’ hitmaker distanced himself from the music genre, Afrobeats.
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“The first place that accepted African music outside Africa was the UK before America later joined. The UK termed African music Afrobeats. I don’t get offended when we’ve been categorised as Afrobeats. I mean, we need a genre.
“It could be R&B or Afropop. I call my music Afrofusion but I’m not big on ‘O put Afrofusion on my song.’ I know how long it took for African music to become mainstream,” he said.
In the past few months, Wizkid, Burna Boy and Fireboy DML have also denounced the genre explicitly stating that they do not belong in the genre.
They described the genre as “meaningless” to their style of music.