Afrobeat Quotes

I've always been a fan of Nigerian artist D'banj. He's now signed to Kanye West's Good Music label.

The Florida sound would probably be best defined as heavy bass with high energy dance records. There's a strong Caribbean heritage in Florida which features a lot of uptempo music, and the music accents the sexy, body-oriented sound.

Well, I heard of Sunny Ade, and looks as if his music is gonna be big on a global level, because I was in London the other day and some people asked me to review the album.

Stuff like Buena Vista Social Club and Fela Kuti were quite a main thing to my childhood. As soon as I reached an age where I realized that Fela was singing in English, when I got past his accent, I loved the rawness of it, and the funk and the rhythm and the melody.

Souljazz doesn't reinvent soul, jazz or the fusion thereof, but it plays all of the above with the passion that drove its forefathers.

I rap and I sing, so then you've got a bit of hip-hop in there. I'm Jamaican, so you got a bit of dancehall. And I'm from London, so there's a bit of London things in there... And at sometimes, it's a little bit Afrobeat.

Because the Internet's there, I have access to a lot of the legends, like Fela Kuti. I used to watch a lot of Fela Kuti videos, just to see how he performed. He inspired me a lot, actually, because he was a man of many words, many good words.

We used to play a lot of Fela Kuti in the early days of hip-hop. In my DJ sets I'll jump off into rock, salsa, African. I like to play some crazy stuff and see the vibrations of the people.

I like to listen to African music; I like to listen to Brazilian music that's not just Choro. I love to listen to Radiohead, I like to listen to James Brown - any music.

I'm not blowing my own trumpet here, but I made a rap song 20 years ago with Afrika Bambaataa.

Salif Keita's one of my favorite artists.

Fela Kuti blew my mind. His playing is very unorthodox, but I learned how to appreciate that.

Without Tony Allen, there would have been no Afrobeat.

Umm... my favourite Wizkid tune of all time would be 'Don't Dull' 'cos I recorded the track in, like, 5 minutes. The beat was ready, we went into the studio and freestyled, and it was ready. The song became really, really big, so I think 'Don't Dull' is still my favourite.

We took dancehall and hip-hop and mixed it in the middle. I knew we had something. I thought, 'This sound is Puerto Rican sound.'

I have to give credit to my mum for my music taste. She's white and Welsh but she listens to dancehall, reggae, Reggaeton.'

The Fela Kuti Queens - the band members and wives of the late African musician Fela Anikulapo Kuti - are my fashion icons.

Outside of Peruvian rap-rock, few genre tags raise eyebrows quite like the words 'Nigerian disco.'

The world hasn't noticed, but R&B has shifted. It's changing course.

I want to show everybody the diverse me and show people that I can do a tune on an R&B song, I can do a tune on a house song, I can do something on an Afrobeat. I really want to show that.