Nigerian artist Davido has claimed that the term “Afrobeats,” now widely associated with West African music, was originally coined in the United Kingdom.
Speaking in a recent interview with Ebro Darden on Apple Music, Davido explained that the British media created the label as a catch-all term to describe the growing wave of West African sounds entering the UK music scene.
“The word ‘Afrobeats’ came from the UK, when D’banj dropped ‘Oliver Twist’, which was the biggest song in the country at the time,” Davido said. “They had to give the genre a name. But Afrobeat is really Fela’s genre.”
His statement challenges a previous claim by superstar Akon, who had suggested he played a founding role in the rise of Afrobeats. In an interview on Sherri, the Senegalese-American singer said his collaborations and partnerships with Nigerian artists and music executives in the late 2000s and early 2010s laid the foundation for what is now known as Afrobeats.
