Afrobeats Finally Gets Its Groove On!

Afrobeats music has taken the world by storm. Hit after hit featuring African artists has been trending on charts across the globe. But why now? writes Cai Nebe for Deutsche Welle.

Nigerian singer Tems croons on Afrobeats star Wizkid's 2021 summer hit, "Essence" was viewed over 67 million times on YouTube, and millions more times when counting remixes on TikTok and Instagram but not long ago, this kind of global success for an Afrobeats song would have raised eyebrows. But the truth is: The Afrobeats genre broadly - and specifically the Nigerian music industry - has in recent years produced hit after hit, writes Nebe.

Lagos-based veteran producer and musician Ade Bantu pointed to the 2012 success of the Nigerian artist D'Banj to explain the current wave of international prominence that Nigerian artists are enjoying. According to Bantu his barrier-breaking, dancefloor-shaking single "Oliver Twist" in the United Kingdom "opened the floodgates." "Everybody just caught the Nigerian bug. And then you have this massive Nigerian diaspora in the UK, the United States, and other hubs around the world," Bantu said.

Analysts have sought to correlate the increased interest in Afrobeats with growing, upwardly mobile West African diaspora populations in major music markets. The advent of social media and streaming was a game-changer for Nigerian artists. Gone are days when individual record companies - both local and foreign - acted as gatekeepers to Afrobeats stardom. With local and foreign streaming services, including Spotify and Apple Music, recently expanding operations in Africa, artists and DJs can tap into other markets.