Over the last decade, Afrobeats has made significant inroads in the global music industry, from invitations to conquer the biggest stages in the world to cross-cultural collaborations with Western superstars like Beyoncé, Drake and Ed Sheeran. And it’s earned institutional recognition. Billboard launched the U.S. Afrobeats Songs chart in 2022 that ranks the 50 most popular Afrobeats songs in the country every week, two years after the Official Charts Company launched the Official U.K. Afrobeats Chart that ranks the 20 most popular Afrobeats in the nation. Last year, The Recording Academy introduced the best African music performance category one year after the MTV Video Music Awards and two years after the American Music Awards presented the best Afrobeats video and favorite Afrobeats artist awards, respectively.
And to commemorate the game changers of the genre, Billboard is ranking the 50 best Afrobeats songs of all time. This list is highlighting the foundational, influential and popular songs within Afrobeats with an s, not to be confused or conflated with Afrobeat, another genre from the 1960s that Fela Kuti pioneered, which fuses West African percussive rhythms and styles like fuji and highlife with American jazz and funk as well as unabashedly political lyrics and chanted vocals.
Emerging in the 2000s, Afrobeats is a popular style of West African music that employs polyrhythms and syncopation and draws inspiration from hip-hop, R&B, dancehall and more while incorporating romantic, celebratory and sociopolitical lyrics sung in Yoruba, Nigerian Pidgin and English. We didn’t include some popular songs that contain only some elements of Afrobeats, like Tyla’s “Water.” (Tyla herself has acknowledged that Afrobeats has paved the way for her international success as an African artist, but it’s not the hallmark attribute of her music). And we sprinkled in some alté to honor Nigeria’s alternative scene, as well as street-pop to represent the pivotal subgenres under the Afrobeats umbrella.
Billboard staffers and contributors agreed on the following criteria: stylistic representation of the genre, local popularity, regional expansion, cultural impact and commercial success. Given the geographical makeup of this group of journalists – ranging from the U.S. to the U.K. to Nigeria – these 50 songs represent how Afrobeats gained momentum at home before migrating and making noise in different markets, echoing the rallying cry of “Afrobeats to the world!” The making of this list did not go without a few debates about which songs stayed and which ones didn’t. And even though a few heavy-hitters like the heralded “Big 3” – Wizkid, Davido and Burna Boy – have contributed numerous defining hits, the max number of songs one artist can have on the list is three, to ensure we capture the breadth of the music as best we can by making room for more artists.
We’re rolling out this list 10 songs at a time, concluding Tuesday (Aug. 19) with the grand reveal of No. 10-1. Read the full list below.
