Before you read a single word about Afrobeats, give us nine beats. Tap, click or hit space each time the ring flashes.
What is Afrobeats? The one letter, the big names and the new voices to hear next
You just spelled it with your hands. The first eight beats gave you Afrobeat, the sound Fela Kuti built in 1970s Lagos. The ninth gave you the S. That one letter is a whole other story, and it starts in a London radio studio.
Read on ↓One letter. Fifty years.
Almost everyone mixes them up, radio hosts included. Afrobeat and Afrobeats are family. They are not the same person.
Afrobeat, no S, belongs to Fela Kuti. In 1969 he spent about ten months in Los Angeles, met the activist Sandra Smith, soaked up the Black Power movement and came home to Lagos a different musician. What he built next mixed highlife, jazz, funk and Yoruba rhythm, and he gave it a name: Afrobeat.1 The engine was his drummer, Tony Allen, who played patterns that refused to sit where a Western backbeat usually sits.1
It was loud and political. And it was long. Really long.
Fela also turned his home into a tiny country. He called it the Kalakuta Republic, founded in 1970: house, studio and stage in one. In 1977 about a thousand soldiers raided it and destroyed the instruments and the master tapes.1 He kept playing anyway.
Now the S. On 16 April 2011, a London DJ called Abrantee Boateng, born in Croydon to Ghanaian parents, started a late-night show on Choice FM. He named it Afrobeats with Abrantee.2 The S was a clever bit of packaging: one word to hold all the new West African pop he was spinning, from Ghanaian hiplife to Nigerian club records, for British listeners who had no name for it yet.3 People in Lagos and Accra still argue about who really named it. The word stuck anyway.
Correct. You now know something half the internet gets wrong.
Not quite. Fela played Afrobeat, no S. The S arrived in London in 2011, fourteen years after he died.
Answer to keep reading
How big is big?
For years, record shops filed African music under “world music”, somewhere near the back. That filing system is broken now.
Before we show you the number, make a guess. No looking it up.
That is Spotify’s own count for 2022, and the genre grew by more than 500% on the platform since 2017.5 Put differently: more than one and a half streams for every person on the planet, in a single year.
Lock a guess to keep reading
In 2022 Billboard started a separate US chart just for Afrobeats, built together with the festival Afro Nation. The first No. 1 was CKay’s “Love Nwantiti (Ah Ah Ah)”.7 And then one song simply refused to leave the top.
weeks at No. 1: Rema & Selena Gomez, “Calm Down”7
Since then, one more song has spent over a year at the top: Tyla’s “Water”.7
In September 2023 “Calm Down” became the first song led by an African artist to pass one billion streams on Spotify. Most of those plays came from the US, India, Mexico, Brazil and the UK.6 Look at that list again. Nigeria isn’t on it. The song had left home and found a new crowd on every continent.
Build your crate.
Every DJ has a crate: the records they would carry out of a burning club. Here are six artists who pushed the sound out of West Africa.
Pick three for yours. Press play first if you like. Nobody is watching.
Burna Boy
Won a Grammy in 2021 for Twice as Tall.9 On 3 June 2023 he sold out London Stadium, 80,000 people, as the first African artist to do it.10 He tours with a full live band of around a dozen musicians.11
Wizkid
On Drake’s “One Dance” in 2016, a No. 1 in 15 countries.3 Then “Essence” with Tems became the first Nigerian song in the Billboard Hot 100 top ten, in October 2021.8
Davido
“Fall” came out in 2017. In December 2018 it became the first Nigerian music video to pass 100 million views on YouTube.12
Tems
Sang the hook the world hummed in 2021, then won her own Grammy in 2025 for “Love Me JeJe”, in the Best African Music Performance category.14
Rema
“Calm Down” was the first African-led track to reach a billion Spotify streams, in 2023. Most of those streams came from outside Africa.6
Yemi Alade
Her 2014 song “Johnny” made her the first African woman whose music video passed 100 million YouTube views.13 Yes, a hit called Johnny. We noticed.
Fill your crate to keep reading
Six names is nowhere near the full list. Asake, Ayra Starr, Tiwa Savage, Olamide and many others push the sound in their own directions every year. The industry is still catching up. The Grammys only created a Best African Music Performance award in 2024.3 South Africa’s Tyla has won it twice, in 2024 and 2026, and every time she wins, the internet argues about whether her amapiano-flavoured pop even counts as Afrobeats.15
That argument is the point. Nobody owns the borders of this music. Which brings us to the road it travelled.
Lagos. Accra. London. Munich.
Afrobeats never moved in a straight line. It went out, came back with new accents, and left again.
Start at stop 1
Everything began in two cities at once.
Finish the route to keep reading
Two records from the UK chapter, if you want to hear what 2012 sounded like on a London night bus:
The king asked for a song.
One more question, and this one is local.
Yes. “Please, don’t let me fall”, or “don’t let me down”. On the street it’s what you say when you’re asking someone for help, very often with money.17
Close, but no. It means “please, don’t let me fall”, or “don’t let me down”. On the street it’s what you say when you’re asking someone for help, very often with money.17
Answer to keep reading
Now picture this. On 4 April 2026, Shallipopi walked into the palace of the Oba of Benin before a hometown concert. The Oba asked him for “Laho”. He sang it right there, no band, no backing track, while members of the royal court joined in. Then he knelt, and the Oba prayed over him.18
A street plea in Edo, turned into a hit record, sung for a king. If you want one scene that explains what Afrobeats is in 2026, that might be it. Shallipopi puts it simply: his language, his accent, all of it “comes from home”.19
And Benin City didn’t start making hits yesterday. In 1965 Victor Uwaifo, the “Guitar Boy” from Benin, released “Joromi”. It is widely credited as the first gold record in Africa. He was 24.16 Later he opened a hotel in the city, lectured, sculpted, served as Edo State’s commissioner for arts and culture, and kept inventing new rhythms until he died in 2021, aged 80.16
Sixty years separate “Joromi” and “Laho”. Same city, same language, same stubborn habit of sounding like nowhere else.
Two from the house
King of Men is the artist, DJ and promoter behind this magazine. These two tracks are on his Audiomack page. “KING OF MEN SALUTE” features Peter the Rock and Junior Victor Uwaifo. “Father of All” features Bro Osaivbie Sunday.24 Play one loud.
Four names to say early.
Big names are easy. The real fun is hearing someone before your friends do.
These four sing in Edo and move between Nigeria and Europe. Put your headphones on.
Don Vs
His first stage was a Benin City TV show called Beat and Laugh, back in 2004. He calls what he makes “traditional pop”, sung in Edo, and he once put his whole reason for doing it in one line: “I see music as a medium to add value to others.”20
Famous Akaba
“ESUNU”, produced by PhilTown Production and released in 2019, had passed a million plays on Audiomack when we checked in September 2026.21 Not bad for a song most playlists outside Edo have never heard of. Yet.
Okuku Scott
From Edo State. He describes his own music as Afrobeat and highlife, and he releases steadily: “Ekia”, “Izozo”, “Sohegbe”, and “Ehi” this July. Start with “Awiki”.22
Stanley O. Iyonawan
Edo music with a band-leader’s instinct, and a long list of guest spots on other Edo artists' records. Start with his 2023 single “Oghogho Maye”.23
Your Afrobeats passport.
You didn’t just read this. You played it. Here’s the record.
- Timing
- Skipped the beat
- Fela
- —
- Your guess
- —
- Your crate
- —
- The road
- —
- Laho
- —
Afrobeats is not one rhythm, one country or one generation. It is African music that keeps moving, mixing and pulling people into the same room. At King of Men that is the whole job: artists, nights and people, from Benin City to Munich and back.
Afrobeats, in six questions
What is Afrobeats?
Afrobeats is an umbrella name for modern West African pop, mainly from Nigeria and Ghana, that took shape in the 2000s. It mixes highlife, hiplife, jùjú, hip-hop, dancehall, R&B and house. The name spread from DJ Abrantee’s London radio show, launched in April 2011.234
What is the difference between Afrobeat and Afrobeats?
Afrobeat (no S) is the style Fela Kuti and drummer Tony Allen created around 1970: long, band-driven, jazz- and funk-influenced songs with political lyrics. Afrobeats (with an S) is the much broader, shorter, pop-focused sound of the 2000s and 2010s.13
Who are the biggest Afrobeats artists?
Burna Boy, Wizkid, Davido, Tems and Rema are the best-known names worldwide, with Asake, Ayra Starr, Tiwa Savage, Yemi Alade and Olamide close behind.
Which Afrobeats song first reached one billion Spotify streams?
“Calm Down” by Rema, with its Selena Gomez remix, in September 2023. It was the first track led by an African artist to join Spotify’s Billions Club.6
What does “Laho” mean?
“Laho” is an Edo word meaning roughly “please, don’t let me fall” or “don’t let me down”. Shallipopi, from Benin City, used it for his 2025 hit.17
Where can I hear Afrobeats live in Munich?
King of Men plans Afrobeats nights and books African and diaspora artists for clubs, venues and private events. Plan a night with us.
Sources
All links checked on 25 September 2026. Streaming and view counts are snapshots and change daily.
- Fela Kuti — Wikipedia
- Abrantee Boateng — Wikipedia
- Afrobeats — Wikipedia
- Afrobeats — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Afrobeats: Journey of a Billion Streams — Spotify
- Rema’s “Calm Down” becomes the first track led by an African artist to join Spotify’s Billions Club — Spotify Newsroom, 11 Sep 2023
- Billboard U.S. Afrobeats Songs — Wikipedia
- Wizkid’s “Essence” becomes first-ever Nigerian top 10 song on Billboard Hot 100 — Hypebeast, Oct 2021
- Burna Boy wins Best Global Music Album for “Twice as Tall” — GRAMMY.com, 2021
- Burna Boy is the first African artist to sell out London Stadium — OkayAfrica, 2023
- Why Burna Boy is the first African artist to sell out stadium shows in the UK and the US — The National, 5 Aug 2023
- Davido’s “Fall” is first Nigerian music video to hit 100m YouTube views — TheCable Lifestyle, Dec 2018
- Yemi Alade’s “Johnny” rakes 100 million views — The Guardian Nigeria, 2019
- Tems wins Best African Music Performance for “Love Me JeJe” — GRAMMY.com, 2025
- Grammys 2026: Tyla wins Best African Music Performance — Music In Africa, Feb 2026
- Great lyricist Victor Uwaifo, ‘Guitar Boy’, dies at 80 — The Guardian Nigeria, Aug 2021
- Music review: Shallipopi’s “Laho” is hustler’s anthem drenched in street reality — Premium Times
- Oba of Benin requests “Laho” as Shallipopi visits palace — Premium Times, Apr 2026
- Shallipopi, the Afrobeats artist bringing Benin City to the world — Dazed
- From Benin City with music: story of Don Vs' humble beginning — Independent (Nigeria), Nov 2021
- Famous Akaba — “ESUNU” on Audiomack
- Okuku Scott on Audiomack
- Stanley O. Iyonawan on Apple Music
- King of Men (Kingofmen-Regards) on Audiomack