Burna Boy Opens Up On His Style Of Music, Says It's Not Afrobeats

The singer has opened up on his style of music, going against the public's definition of his art.

Nigerian iconic singer, songwriter and performer, Damini Ogulu, popularly known as Burna Boy, has made it known that his style of music is Afrofusion, and not Afrobeats.

The Grammy-award winning act is often referred to as an Afrobeats artist, but during the latest episode of The Million Dollar Worth of Game podcast, the singer made it clear that just because the music genre comes from Africa, doesn’t automatically make it Afrobeats.

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In terms of why he is an Afrofusion artist, the PH-born singer bases his claim on the premise of creating music that fuses everything, with Afro-Africanness being the most important component.

He also stated that African music has so many genres and generalising it all as Afrobeats is a "disservice to other artists" in other genres. He said:

For me it’s like the same way you’re going to say Nas is an R&B singer because he’s from America or Whitney Houston was a rapper because rap is the most popping thing now,” he said.

I can’t accept that because I’m not a rapper. So now in Africa when you talk about music, the first thing they say is Afrobeats. Afrobeats is a legend called Fela Kuti.

Years went by and Nigerian musicians started dropping music that was becoming something. So they needed to call it something to be able to identify with it.

Somehow they just said Afrobeats and added an s. I don’t know how I don’t know what sense that made but that’s what happened. Somewhere along the line, all the music that comes from Africa just writes Afrobeats.

We have Highlife, Juju music, Fuji music, South African Kwaeto music, Amapiano, Afropop, we have all types of genres in Africa. To be really sincere, for you to just call everything Afrobeats is kind of a disservice to the artists.

For me, when I started the Afrofusion thing, it was like my music was not the same with anything that was out. It was like everybody else kind of sounded the same.

It was one kind of move and for me, there was nothing I could identify myself with. So I just decided that I’ll call it Afrofusion because it’s a fusion of everything. The Afro-Africaness is the thing that covers it.

Burna Boy explains why he is an Afrofusion artiste and NOT an Afrobeats artiste. pic.twitter.com/I5gdnVopKO

— ♡? @OneJoblessBoy ? (@OneJoblessBoy) July 4, 2022

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