Senegalese-American singer Akon has claimed that his collaboration with Nigerian artists and music executives in the late 2000s to 2010s gave birth to the genre of music, Afrobeats.
Akon boasted that he had partnered with the likes of Wizkid, Banky W, P-Square, D’banj and other Nigerian musicians years before the ‘Afrobeats to the World’ movement went viral.
The singer said, “2008 was my last official album, which was the ‘Freedom’ album. And then I was producing the music for the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa. From there, I went to Nigeria. What we created in Nigeria was what you see now and hear now as Afrobeats.
“Wizkid was the first [Nigerian] artiste that we signed back in 2008. We went to work with him and Banky W in Nigeria. From there, we just started developing artists like PSquare, Dbanj and others.”
