why this is such an exciting time for the afrobeats scene

London evolves. The city thrives on the unpredictable hybridizations of immigrant culture, styles shifting shape as fast as each generation grows up. This means that you can solidly bet that any time the mainstream is championing an aesthetic, the underground has moved on. And so, inevitably, as the media finally allows grime a seat at the top table, the streets have started bumping to a whole new sound.

Spend an hour or two listening to any of London’s booming new internet radio stations, the likes of Radar, Balamii, or Reprezent, and you’ll soon hear this new direction; a fusion of rap, bashment, and R&B that has been refreshed by a new ingredient: Afrobeats. If this new scene has anything in common with the early days of grime, it’s that currently no one knows what you call it. Call it UK Afrobeats, Afrowave, New Wave, or Afro Fusion — all of these have been tried, although none yet feel like they’re definitive. Whatever name you choose, there is a definite sound emerging; enough so that MOVES, a compilation curated by scene linchpin DJ Afro B has recently been announced — featuring around 20 artists. It looks like 2017 is set to be the year the scene (and we’ll call it UK Afrobeats for now) arrives.

Unlike other UK dance genres which have traditionally been defined by the tempo and arrangement of the drums, Afrobeats is largely defined by melody; no matter what speed the track, the vocals will be delivered in an autotuned West African scale that’s as sweet as it is mournful. It’s hard to describe but unmistakable once heard.

The genre has been bubbling away for a few years now, with the most visible early success being Fuse ODG’s assault on the charts in 2014 with his trio of sparkly pop tracks Antenna, Million Pound Girl, and Dangerous Love. These chart-friendly bangers introduced Fuse’s Ghanaian tones to radio, but his borderline EDM sound, glossy synths, and major chords produced by the Ghanaian producer KillBeatz, didn’t catch hold with London kids who were dealing with increasingly bleak inner city living. No one immediately followed in Fuse’s footsteps and he started to look like a fluke. Meanwhile the estates and suburbs of London were ringing to the slow motion menace of trap and drill, a murkier sound more in tune with the constrained economic times than Fuse’s optimistic sheen. African immigrant kids — emboldened by the success of Fuse, as well as the rising profile of Nigerian artists such as Wizkid, Tekno, and Davido, and the groundwork put in by other underground UK artists such as Mista Silva and Kwamz & Flava — started to spit bars in their own accents, finding a commonality between the mutated autotuned soul of Young Thug, Fetty Wap, and Future, the sorrowful threat of Jamaican star Mavado, and the hooky melodies popularized in Ghanaian and Nigerian pop.

In 2015 this growing scene had its first visible hit. The Newham-based artist J Hus recorded “Dem Boy Paigon,” a track that saw him crib lines from a wide variety of acts he loved — from TLC to JME — and deliver them over a sparse rap beat in an accent that reflected both his Gambian heritage and his life hustling on the roads of London. The track was a huge hit in the clubs and on the streets, drawing enough attention that Hus was rapidly signed to the Sony backed label Black Butter. As it turned out, he was just the first of many artists experimenting with this fusion of harder edged beats and honeyed melodies — suddenly there were new artists emerging from all across the capital.

DIY studios sprang up all round the outskirts of London, in places such as Forest Gate, Croydon, Lewisham, and Wimbledon that have so far resisted the spreading gentrification of London. Cheap technology turbo-charged the process. Studio speakers, microphones, and computers are cheap enough now that a serviceable studio can be put together for $1200. Music videos can be made for as little as $75. Spend $600 and you can have an epic. With the rise of YouTube channels such as Link Up TV, GRM Daily, and PressPlay, there is now a complete, self-contained eco-system. Artists can record a track on Tuesday, shoot the video on Wednesday, drop it on Sunday, and see a hundred thousand views come in by the following Tuesday. Acts such as Belly Squad and Kojo Funds now release videos that have plays in the millions, all with the barest of support from the traditional media and music industry.

Around them there’s a whole scene of artists all pushing their own variation on the sound — and in this way, again, the scene has parallels; in the early days of grime, it was a point of honor that no two MCs or producers would sound alike. UK Afrobeats has a similar mindset, even if the results are more disparate. On one end of the scene you have acts such as S.K., New Age Muzik, and Sona pursuing a smoother R&B sound, big on ballads mixed with syncopated African percussion. At the other end of the scale you have acts like Naira Marley, CXCV or Belly Squad who make harder road tracks best heard blasting from behind the tinted windows of a German whip. In between there are artists such as Afro B, who is teaming up with production power house Team Salut to work out how to bring the scene the pop edge it needs to emulate Fuse ODG’s earlier success. There are links between artists going back years — often with family ties thrown in. And as with most families, collaboration is as common as confrontation. Suffice to say competition is fierce, everyone is hungry, and a lot of music is being made quickly.

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Where the scene goes over the next few months is hard to guess — it’s already moved from Fuse ODG’s power pop to the bashment-ready crud of Kojo Funds in the space of a couple of years. With scene leaders such as Belly Squad still in their teens, there’s a lot of development yet to come. In many ways this current period, where the scene is not fully named let alone rigidly defined, and where anything remains possible, might be the most exciting time of all.