18th April, 2024
By Taiwo Okanlawon
Nigerian singer Adedamola Adefolahan, popularly known as Fireboy DML has reiterated that his style of music is not Afrobeats.
He, however, said his “roots and identity” are always in his music.
The ‘Peru’ crooner disclosed this while featuring as a guest in the latest episode of Amazon Music podcast, ‘B And N.’
Fireboy said, “As I always said, I don’t make Afrobeats. I just sort of like combined stuffs. I do different kinds of music so even when I am making R&B or pop, you can hear the Yoruba ‘h’ factor.
“You just know that this is not an American or British person, so you can always tell that my roots and my identity is always in my music.”
Fireboy said Nigerian artists need to take advantage of their newfound global recognition and build a structure for their home music industry.
“One thing I want to talk about is we are here [Western world] now. Afrobeats is here now. So what is the way forward? What next?
“I personally think this Afrobeats to the world thing shouldn’t be given more attention. I mean, we are already here. even before the Grammy [created an African category], we’ve already been recognised. We’ve achieved so much. So we need to build a structure. And more concerned about the future of the genre; the sustainability,” he said.
In a recent interview with BET, Fireboy claimed that the Afrobeats scene before his emergence was just “vibes” and lacked “pure soul and lyricism.”
He explained that he created his own sub-genre of Afrobeats because he knew his sound was “different.”
In the interview, Fireboy talks about how he got interested in making music, his many notable collaborations with the likes of Blaqbonez, Jon Bellion, Jon Batiste, Jax Jones, Madonna and his most well know collaboration Ed Sheeran on his most famous song “Peru,”.
He also talks about how he feels about the Grammys finally recognizing Afrobeats, how much he loves football, mixing Afrobeats and country music, his love of Noah Kahan and more.