Veteran Rapper
OpenLife reports that veteran Nigerian rapper Ruggedman is taking a firm stand against the way African music is often packaged for international audiences.
Speaking in a recent interview with Day Genius, he shared his long-held frustration with the blanket term “Afrobeats.”
“I don’t like Afrobeats as an umbrella genre from every music coming out of Africa. That was a mistake. I didn’t liked it from the beginning but when I complained people accused me of being jealous or trying to gatekeep,” he revealed.
Ruggedman stressed that this broad labeling can misrepresent artists abroad.
“Right now, if I go to the UK to perform, I would be tagged an Afrobeats artistes.
It is wrong,” he said, explaining that much of the misclassification stems from foreign markets, especially in the United Kingdom.
“It is the people in the UK who started this thing of tagging every African music Afrobeats. Nigerians love classicism.
They just wanted to give it a name.”
He didn’t hold back on critiquing the genre itself. “For me, Afrobeats with an ‘S’ is a name talentless Nigerians hide behind. All you need to make an Afrobeats hit is just to get a good beat and a street slang and repeat it as many times as you like.
Then spend a lot of money to promote it. That is the Afrobeats with an ‘S’,” Ruggedman asserted, adding that only a few performers can deliver without autotune or live-band support.
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