Afrobeat & Afrobeats - The Difference A Letter Makes.

The year is 2018, davido has just won the best international act at the BET awards, he had released hits all year, Burna Boy would also go on to record Gbona, On The Low, and Ye (Nigeria's unofficial national anthem), Wizkid had sold out the Royal Albert Hall and performed at the wireless festival the year before also featuring one of the biggest pop stars in the world on his record.

What a time for African music, what a time to be a fan of Afrobeats, the sound is expressive and engaging this is quite evident as the subtle inviting beats of Wizkid's Ojuelegba is blaring from speakers in the streets of Shitta and if you took a trip to the New Afrika shrine Burna Boy's monster hit would probably be killing them.

The sound is Afrobeats if you called it Afropop you wouldn’t be wrong, because that’s what it is, African pop music.

Afrobeats is both the evolution and in many ways antithesis of its prefixed forebear. Having slowly emerged over the past several years, it exists in diametrical opposition to all Kuti and his movement stood for.

Afrobeat on the other hand is the genre founded by Fela Anikulapo Kuti, and we've always had a case of identity crisis between Afrobeat and Afrobeats. A lot of people believe they are the same quoting one of such he says “ Na the same thing, shebi burna dey sample fela well well and starboy sef don copy one or two of fela song” while this is a popular belief, the African style in Afrobeats is gotten from Afrobeat.

Afrobeats originated from Afrobeat, according to Dr. Dotun Ransome Kuti “The music being played today, whether we like it or not has its origin from Afrobeat. It is not oyinbo style. It is the African style and that African style originated from somewhere” Explaining further he said “and from Afrobeat, you have Afrojazz, you have Afropop, you have also Afro highlife. Everything came from Afrobeat and that Afrobeat was created by Fela Anikulapo Kuti”.

While Afrobeat is the mixture of traditional Nigerian and Ghanaian music, highlife, funk, and jazz fused with percussion and vocal styles popularized in Africa in the 1970s. Afrobeats, existing in diametrical opposition to all Fela stood for is an adaptation of the revered Afrobeat genre coined by UK based Ghanaian DJ, DJ Abrantee.

With Afrobeat, the lyrics are of utmost importance but with Afrobeats the beat is not just the base of the melody but acts as the major character of the song, taking a lead role that is sometimes equal to or of greater importance than the lyrics and always more central than other instrumentals. The Afrobeats tag has grown to become the prime identity of contemporary African music. The new sound from Africa.