Afrobeats’ Global Takeover

Over the last several years, American listeners have grown more and more attuned to the sounds of West African pop music—also known as Afrobeats–whether it’s the swaggering Nigerian Afro-fusion of Burna Boy, the playfully genre-bending anthems of Ghanaian-American singer Amaarae, or the enthusiastic dabbling of stateside superstars like Drake and Diplo. On this episode, Pitchfork Editor Puja Patel is joined by Nigerian journalist Joey Akan, publisher of the Afrobeats Intelligence newsletter, and Mankaprr Conteh, Pitchfork Editorial Operations Associate, for a discussion about the music’s global rise and the West’s complicated rush to embrace it, as well as the fraught nature of the term “Afrobeats” itself.