Ruggedman Blasts: "Talentless" Artists are Using Afrobeats as a Cover

Ruggedman (Nigerian rapper)

Veteran rapper Ruggedman is speaking out against labeling all African music as "Afrobeats." In a recent interview with Day Genius, he explained that he has long opposed the term, even though critics previously accused him of just being jealous of younger stars.

Ruggedman argues that Afrobeats isn't a legitimate music genre—instead, he claims it's just a "brand name" used by mediocre Nigerian artists to mask their lack of talent.

“I don’t like Afrobeats as an umbrella genre from every music coming out of Africa. That was a mistake. I didn’t liked it from the beginning but when I complained people accused me of being jealous or trying to gatekeep.

“Right now, if I go to the UK to perform, I would be tagged an Afrobeats artistes. It is wrong.

“It is the people in the UK who started this thing of tagging every African music Afrobeats. Nigerians love classicism. They just wanted to give it a name.

“For me, Afrobeats with an ‘S’ is a name talentless Nigerians hide behind. All you need to make an Afrobeats hit is just to get a good beat and a street slang and repeat it as many times as you like. Then spend a lot of money to promote it. That is the Afrobeats with an ‘S’,” he said.

Ruggedman further claimed that very few Afrobeats artists can actually sing without the help of Auto-Tune. According to him, this lack of raw vocal ability is exactly why most of them avoid freestyling or performing live with a real band.