In a recent interview with the B and N podcast the singer stated clearly that he does not intentionally make afrobeats, he said the afrobeats just comes off like that when ever he sings.
” i wouldn’t say i intentionally do it (afrobeats) it just comes off like that, i just like to combine different stuff when imake my music , so even when i am making R&B or pop you can hear the yoruba H factor in the music, so you can easily tell this is not an American person”
The singer also added,”my roots and my identity are always in my music” he said this while discussing on the presence of the traditional and indigenous elements found in his music. His emphasis on not intentionally creating afrobeats is a reiteration of his recent claim of creating his Afro-live genre that is different from the usual afrobeats, he made this statement in an interview with BET where he also give himself credits for bringing soul and depth into the the Nigerian music industry.
His claim sparked up criticisms on social media especially from people who feel he did not pioneer the Afro soul musical genre but came to meet it (afro soul) in the industry just like every other artist, appearing on the podcast was also bloody civilian.
there has been contineous conversations and debates on the originality of afrobeats, as most Nigerian artists have developed new words and terms to differentiate themselves and their music from afrobeats, some of these artists being Burna boy, who describes his music as Afro fusion, Davido and wizkid who have disassociated themselves from the afrobeats genre and Ckay who refers to his style of singing as afro emo.
Fireboy also said that, artists in the Nigerian music industry should take advantage of their global recognition chances and build a standard structure for their music back home ” one thing i want to talk about is that, we are here(western world) now, afrobeats is here now, so what is the way forward? what next? i personally think this afrobeat to the world thing shouldn’t be given more attention, i mean we were already here before the grammys created an African category, we’ve already been recognized, we have achieved so much so we need to build a structure and be more concerned about the future of the genre, the sustainability ”
He further went o explain that he created his own sub genre because at the start of his musical career his sound was different from others, and therefore he had every treason to name his genre afro soul, while at the podcast he spoke about his collaborations with artists like Madonna, Jon Bellion, Jax Jones and his much loved collaboration with Ed Sheeran on his hit single ‘peru’
