Seun Kuti, the Grammy-nominated Afrobeat musician, has argued that Afrobeats is more of a label than an actual genre.
According to him, Afrobeats lacks a consistent style and instead serves as a broad classification for music originating from Africa. He explained that artists under the Afrobeats umbrella often switch between different sounds, making it difficult to define as a single genre.
Kuti stressed that even top artists and industry executives don’t treat Afrobeats as a structured genre but rather as a marketing tag. He pointed to the rise of Amapiano as an example, noting how it has become a dominant sound within what is still branded as Afrobeats.
“I think Afrobeats is more of a title than a genre. You can see Amapiano is the new Afrobeats. It’s the new title, it’s the new thing in Afrobeats. So, Afrobeats is just a generalisation; it’s just a title to identify something from a particular place [Africa].
“I don’t think it’s a genre. Even the gatekeepers, the big names don’t deal with it like a genre, they don’t work it like a genre. They are [Afrobeats] artists that are eclectic in a way that they could do a dancehall track today, do a blues track tomorrow, do a Nigerian pop sound, jump on Amapiano, and whatever that is trending. So, I think it’s actually a title.”
