The History of Afrobeats: From Fela Kuti to Burna Boy
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Afrobeats didn't start with Burna Boy or Wizkid. It started with Fela Kuti in Lagos in the 1970s. Understanding that history makes the music — and the culture — mean so much more.
Fela Kuti and the Origins of Afrobeats
Fela Anikulapo Kuti was a Nigerian musician, composer, and political activist who created Afrobeat (without the 's') in the late 1960s and 1970s. He blended traditional Yoruba music with jazz, funk, and political commentary to create a sound that was uniquely African and unapologetically political.
Fela's music was a direct challenge to the Nigerian military government. He sang about corruption, oppression, and the legacy of colonialism. He was arrested over 200 times. His commune, the Kalakuta Republic, was raided by soldiers. His mother was thrown from a window and later died of her injuries.
He kept making music. He kept speaking truth. He is the godfather of Afrobeats.
The 1990s and 2000s: The New Generation
In the 1990s and 2000s, a new generation of Nigerian and Ghanaian artists began blending Fela's Afrobeat with hip-hop, R&B, and dancehall. Artists like 2Face Idibia, D'banj, and P-Square created the sound that would become modern Afrobeats.
The key moment was D'banj's collaboration with Kanye West in 2012 — it brought Afrobeats to a global audience for the first time.
The 2010s: Wizkid, Davido, and Global Domination
Wizkid's 2016 collaboration with Drake on "One Dance" — which became the first Nigerian song to reach number one in the UK — changed everything. Suddenly the world was listening to Afrobeats.
Davido, Tiwa Savage, and Tems followed. By 2020, Afrobeats was the fastest-growing music genre in the world.
Burna Boy and the Grammy Era
Burna Boy's 2020 Grammy win for Best Global Music Album marked the official arrival of Afrobeats on the world stage. His music carries the full weight of African cultural heritage — from Fela Kuti's political Afrobeat to the contemporary Afrobeats sound.
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About the Author
Isaac Prempeh is the founder of Afropop Socks and a British-Ghanaian entrepreneur based in London. He grew up in a Ghanaian family surrounded by Kente cloth and Adinkra symbols and founded Afropop Socks in 2019 to bring African cultural heritage into everyday fashion. Afropop Socks is now stocked at the Smithsonian NMAAHC, Tate Modern, V&A Museum, Natural History Museum, Barbican Centre, Selfridges, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, and MoMA New York.
Isaac writes from personal experience of Ghanaian and British-African heritage. All cultural information in this article has been verified against academic sources.