Seun Kuti dismisses Afrobeats as a genre, says it is merely a ‘label’

Nigerian musician Seun Kuti has stirred conversation in the global music scene after declaring that Afrobeats should not be considered a genre but merely a label.

Speaking in an interview with BEAT FM 99.9FM on Tuesday, the son of Afrobeat pioneer Fela Anikulapo Kuti argued that, unlike his father’s Afrobeat, which is rooted in a distinct musical structure blending jazz, funk, and African rhythms, Afrobeats is simply a catch-all marketing term created to package contemporary African pop music for global audiences.

He asserted that “Afrobeats” is merely a term used to classify music from Africa and pointed out that neither musicians nor business leaders in the Afrobeats scene treat it as a separate genre.

“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 blue track tomorrow, do a Nigerian pop sound, jump on Amapiano, and whatever else is trending. So, I think it’s actually a title,” he stated