Grammy-winning Nigerian artist Burna Boy has finally addressed the controversy surrounding his earlier statement that he doesn’t make “Afrobeats,” a comment that drew widespread backlash and sparked debates across the music community.
In a candid interview on a recent podcast, the Last Last hitmaker explained that his intention was never to diss the genre or separate himself from its cultural significance. Instead, Burna Boy emphasized that from the very beginning of his career, he coined his sound “Afrofusion”, a deliberate move to reflect the diversity and complexity of his musical influences.
“When I came back home and started making music, I called it Afrofusion. Why? Because what I was creating was different. There was no proper space for it at the time,” he said, adding that his unique blend of styles created room for other alternative artists to emerge, contributing to movements like alté.
Burna Boy expressed frustration with how all African music was often lumped under the Afrobeats label, leading to a sense of his work being misclassified. “It was like they were forcing it. Like, why must everything I do be tagged as Afrobeats?” he questioned. “I’ve always said it’s Afrofusion.”
To drive his point home, he used a vivid analogy: “It’s like calling both Kendrick Lamar and Socrates the same thing just because they rhyme. One is a rapper, one is a philosopher. They are both speaking, but it’s not the same thing.”
However, Burna Boy acknowledged that his resistance to the Afrobeats label came from a limited understanding of its global impact. He has since come to appreciate the unifying power of the term and the role it plays in giving African artists global visibility.
“I didn’t understand that for us to get anywhere, we needed that umbrella. Like how Hip Hop had to first be accepted as Hip Hop before trap and other sub-genres emerged,” he said.
In closing, Burna offered an apology for any confusion or division his earlier remarks may have caused. “I get it now. And I apologise for the misunderstanding. We need to stick together. The tag matters more than I realized,” he said.
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