The Rise of Afrobeats, Through The Lens of Afroswing
Blessing Borode traces the origins of one of the freshest and innovative Black British movements, Afrobeats…
TRENCH
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J Hus performs to a sold-out crowd in Norway by Laura BrosnanTRENCH
It's the mid-2010s and UK music is promising and fertile. The days of iPod Shuffles, Blackberry Messenger and YouTube to MP3 converters are afoot.
Thumbing through your library of hood classics from rappers like Sho Shallow, Giggs, Ard Adz and Political Peak, you land on Mover and Timbo’s era-defining track "Ringtone".
Produced by P Montana, Mover goes bar for bar until we arrive at Timbo's melodic hook, which was arguably the first time this combination of Afro sounds and gritty road rap was heard on wax.
DJ and producer P Montana in South London by Laura BrosnanTRENCH
Full of ease and simplicity, P Montana's Afro-infused melodies glide over an easy-going bassline, marking the arrival of what we now know as Afroswing. While the official term had not yet come to be, UK music began pivoting in a whole new direction.
Adjacent to this moment in time, Sneakbo was steadily riding his Jetski Wave' agenda, laying hard-hitting rhymes over dancehall riddims. Afroswing is loosely defined as the integration of Afrobeats with rap, grime and dancehall, mixing the sensual with the concrete and complex.
From Timbo came the likes of Naira Marley, Not3s, Yxng Bane, MoStack, J Hus, Kojo Funds and many others who simultaneously locked in a definitive criteria for this particular style of music.
Behind each of these artists were some mastermind producers who used this phrase as an opportunity to showcase the depth of their sound beyond grime and R&B, swinging from one genre to the next.
It’s important to note that Afroswing wouldn’t exist without the presence of Afrobeats in the UK, which has always been around—from African hall parties to university raves; although, at the time, bashment would usually be the main theme of the night.
Then along came Nigerian artist D'Banj with the addictive "Oliver Twist". Produced by Don Jazzy, its pulsing bassline delivers a two-note groove with a distant cowbell keeping the pace, while D'Banj discloses details of his innocent crushes.
A crowd react to Naira Marley at his London live show by Laura BrosnanTRENCH
It became widely popular in the UK and he became the first African artist to earn his spot on the Official Singles Chart at No. 9.
Now that Afrobeats had seen the mainstream light, it only added more fuel to other artists, producers and DJs to continue establishing an unshakable foundation for African music in the UK.
Afrobeats is a musical language intrinsically understood by children of the diaspora, but what happens when those codes are passed through the creative generator that is UK culture?
A crowd react to Naira Marley at his London live show by Laura BrosnanTRENCH
A myriad of terms like 'Afroswing', 'Afro-fusion' and 'Afrobashment' begin to spring forth, forcing us to abandon all rigid views on genre tags. Now that artists are audacious enough to plunge into experimental territories, where will these sounds take us next?
This digital work has been produced in collaboration with PRS Foundation and POWER UP. The article first featured in TRENCH x Union Black's Chapter One: Game Changers zine.
Words by Blessing Borode
Photography by Laura Brosnan [Frank Archives]
Videos by GRM Daily, Mixtape Madness, Skepta, J Hus, Naira Marley, Sneakbo
Commissioned by TRENCH
