Nigerian rapper, Ice Prince, asserts that his 2011 track “Oleku” marked the genesis of the “Afrobeats” genre. Asserting that his team consciously added an “s” to Fela Kuti’s “Afrobeat” label, Ice Prince contends that this alteration was pivotal in differentiating their new sound.
In a recent interview with Echoo Room, Ice Prince emphasized the significance when “Oleku” received airplay on BBC Radio, branding it as one of the earliest Afrobeats tracks to attain such recognition. Ice Prince avowed, “They [foreign DJs] didn’t know what to call our music and they couldn’t call it Afrobeat. So, we [I and my team] told them to put an ‘s’ it to make it Afrobeats.”
Ice Prince further challenged the commonly held belief that Ghanaian-British DJ Abrantee is credited with coining the term “Afrobeats,” asserting that it was their directive to use the label. He queried, “If not tell me who came up with the ‘s’ at the end? A lot of people said it is credited to DJ Abrante, but guess what? Abrante was the one that playlisted the song ‘Oleku.’ That’s my own claim, o!”
Ice Prince’s statement reignites the discourse surrounding the origin of the Afrobeats genre and its nomenclature. Whether “Oleku” indeed holds the mantle as the inaugural Afrobeats record remains a point of contention, further fueling the ongoing dialogue on the genre’s evolution.
