Don’t downgrade Afrobeats no matter what level you’re — Bella Shmurda

Street hop artiste Abiola Ahmed Akinbiyi, known professionally as Bella Shmurda has expressed his dissatisfaction with the recent denigration of Afrobeats by some artistes who gained fame and fortune with the genre.

The high tension hit maker shared his displeasure on the big names disrespecting Afrobeats during a recent interview on The 90s Show. Bella Shmurda stated that he was displeased with the recent comments he saw about Afrobeats from big artistes and he wanted to say something on social media but he didn’t want to risk having issues with people.

He said, “We all artistes should respect Afrobeats. This is our thing, you can’t downgrade it no matter what level you are. The country is bad, the government is bad and this (Afrobeats) is the source of our happiness, you can’t downgrade it.”

The Lako, Soldier Go, Party Next Door singer berated the big names in the genre who in a bid to distinguish themselves have made unflattering comments on Afrobeats. According to him, these big artistes don’t support the local awards or perform in Nigeria but they claim to be representing Africa when they go in search of Western acclaim.

“We have Headies Awards, we have AFRIMA, they call you and you don’t want to perform because you’re too big but when you go for these international awards you try to give Africa shout outs and make it look like you’re representing Africa. Leave the shout outs, it’s for yourself. You’re not real and you’re not representing Africa because if you’re representing Africa, you will be at an African award,” Bella stated in a tone filled with pain and rage.

Reacting to the claim that artistes are refusing to be boxed in award categories by the Afrobeats tag, Bella urge fellow artistes to prioritize the Nigerian and African awards that understand their music, adding that even if they want to brand their music to fit into other categories outside of Afrobeats, they should do that without denigrating genre.

Nigerian music sensation, Ayodeji Balogun, well known as Wizkid recently declared his independence from the Afrobeats genre.
He challenged music fans to remove him from their playlist if they expect the same style of music from the sounds that helped shape his career.

In a series of Instastory posts, the Ojuelegba, Pakurumo crooner made his position clear, saying: “Don’t call me an Afrobeats artiste. I’m not Afro anything.”