Genre or Hypernym: Deconstructing Afrobeats in the Global Music Industry

The current buzz surrounding West African popular music in the moniker of Afrobeats has placed a global spotlight on West African artists and their music. Afrobeats was popularized among mainstream North American audiences in 2016 when world-renowned musician Drake featured Nigerian musician, Wizkid, on his song “One Dance.” The term has gone under scrutiny in various debates between critics and advocates. What exactly is Afrobeats? Is it a musical genre with distinct sonic signifiers or a socially generated term for a panoply of West African popular music genres? Is it a synonym for West African popular music? Afrobeats is an ambiguous term because it evades a definition. Perhaps, the conundrum stems from the fact that it shares the same name with a precedent (and different) musical style–Afrobeat without an ‘s’–often associated with the world-renowned Nigerian musician and activist Fela Anikulapo-Kuti. This article traces the trajectory of the term from its conception as a hypernym circulating within West African communities outside Africa to its construction as a genre in the mainstream global music industry. By analyzing the operative distinctions between Afrobeats as a hypernym and Afrobeats as a genre, I explore the amalgamation of diverse genres as Afrobeats and the ensuing genrefication of Afrobeats. I argue that Afrobeats has been conceptualized differently within various contexts in the Global North. Through a critical analysis of conventional and alternative modes of circulation and consumption of music, I expatiate on how and why the term was constructed as well as its significance. Finally, by discussing the various ways in which the distinct modes of global circulation intersect, I suggest that Afrobeats is a social and aesthetic category within a diasporic cultural framework on the one hand, and a marketing category operating within what Dave Laing (2009) calls a “genre-market” on the other.