When South African star Tyla accepted her award for Best Afrobeats at the 2024 MTV Video Music Awards, her celebratory mood quickly shifted to one of contemplation. While she acknowledged the moment as significant for African music, noting that her hit track Water proved the continent’s sound could dominate the pop landscape, she described the recognition as bittersweet. Tyla warned that grouping all African music under the single umbrella of Afrobeats overlooks the vast diversity of the continent’s soundscapes. As a representative of amapiano, South Africa’s distinct, rhythmic dance subgenre, she noted that while the term has opened doors, it fails to capture the true breadth of African musical output. She began her acceptance speech in a celebratory tone. “This is such a big moment for African music, beaming in a yellow dress. I come from South Africa, I represent amapiano”, referring to the country’s rolling, sensual dance subgenre. Months later she’d reprise her win in the Afrobeats category of the American Music Awards, her passionate entreaty notwithstanding.
Tyla is part of a growing cohort of artists challenging the dominance of the Afrobeats label. Nigerian singer Tems has openly rejected the term, preferring to define her work as a blend of R&B, soul, and alternative elements. Similarly, stars including Burna Boy, who characterizes his music as Afrofusion, alongside Wizkid, Davido, Ckay, and King Promise, have frequently expressed discomfort with the catch-all label. Despite their resistance, the term remains the primary descriptor used by the industry to classify everything from rap and gospel to highlife and dance music. Likewise, Burna Boy prefers to call his music Afrofusion, a fitting characterisation of the smorgasbord of sounds that converge in his music.
The roots of the term trace back to the early 2010s. London-based DJ Abrantee popularized the label as a marketing tool for radio stations and the rising streaming market, adapting the name from Fela Kuti’s iconic Afrobeat. As the global popularity of African music surged, fueled by international hits such as Rema’s Calm Down and Moliy’s Shake It to the Max, Afrobeats became a standard industry identifier. This rebranding even influenced official systems, such as when the UK Official Charts Company launched an African pop chart in 2020 under the Afrobeats name.
While supporters point to the success of this strategy in marketing African sounds to Western audiences, industry insiders argue the cost is too high. Grammy-winning producer and singer Bloody Civilian, who is set to tour with Tyla this October, describes the classification as deeply limiting. She expressed frustration that Western industry figures continue to force the diverse experimental sounds emerging from the continent into a singular, narrow box. This phenomenon disproportionately affects West African music, where producers often create new genres that are quickly subsumed into the Afrobeats machine, only to be abandoned when trends shift. Tyla is hardly the only African artist to rail against the Afrobeats tag.
The career of Mr Eazi, who gained fame in 2015 for his banku music—a blend of Nigerian pop and Ghanaian highlife—illustrates the risks of this homogenization. Despite the genre’s distinct sound, characterized by a specific four-stroke kick-drum pattern and a vibrant aesthetic of dashikis and straw hats adopted by students across West Africa, it struggled to maintain a lasting cultural legacy. Without proper contextualization or a push in Western markets as a distinct genre, banku music faded from the mainstream consciousness rather than evolving. Other styles such as zanku, azonto, cruise, and afropiano have faced similar fates. Mr Eazi, a Nigerian who had attended university in neighbouring Ghana, vaulted to continental fame in 2015.
Culture journalist Tiléwa Kazeem points out that many international publications view these emerging African styles as too esoteric to define, resulting in a lack of proper documentation. The persistence of the Afrobeats label has not only obscured the visibility of these distinct traditions but has also hindered the scholarly or journalistic record necessary for them to thrive. Dolapo Amusat, founder of the creative network WeTalkSound, notes that for new genres to achieve the cultural standing of Western counterparts like grunge or hyperpop, they require intentionality and detailed documentation. Mara, an emerging fusion of street pop and electronic music, serves as a current example of how artists can build a sustained identity for a specific sound.
The responsibility for this change lies with everyone in the ecosystem, from Western marketers to African media and the artists themselves. Culture writer Dennis Ade Peter notes that there remains a persistent tension between cultural integrity and commercial interests. Ultimately, as theorist bell hooks argued regarding Black art, there is a necessity for critical, active intervention to prevent the marginalization of creative work. Addressing this will require a departure from the convenience of a single label in favor of a more nuanced understanding of the continent’s evolving musical identity. As bell hooks noted in her essay collection Art on My Mind, Black people “must be held accountable when we do not make needed critical interventions” required to correct insular views around Black art.
