Paper short abstract:

This study is motivated by a specific social media moment where a collaborative effort provoked conversation on social media around sampling and African musical innovation. Drawing on Burna Boy’s “On the Low” and Arya Starr’s “Sability,” i interrogate the effect of sampling on Afrobeats genre.

Paper long abstract:

This study is motivated by the ways in which a specific social media moment where a collaborative effort provoked conversation on social media around sampling and African musical innovation. The success of Burna Boy’s “Last Last” which sampled Toni Braxton’s “He wasn’t Man Enough for Me” generated discussion around distribution of royalties and the nature of musical adaptation possible within Afrobeats as a genre. Partly, it has been claimed that the success of Afrobeats has a lot to do with its nodding to other musical forms within and beyond Africa. While Burna Boys’ “Last Last” demonstrates a cultural exchange that is inter-continental, this paper explores Afrobeats songs that manifest intra-continental forms of cultural exchange and the social media debates framing their reception as popular songs. Drawing on Burna Boy’s “On the Low” and Arya Starr’s “Sability” as well as social media debates by audiences across cultural divides on the selected songs, this paper explores intra-African sampling and interpolation, and their effect on the resilience of Afrobeats as a musical genre. In addition, the paper interrogates the question of originality within adaptation. The study will take a media ethnography approach which will be supplemented by a close reading of the selected songs. Karin Barber’s concept of “entextualization” and McLeod and Dicola’s ideas on digital sampling will be used to examine how sampling serves to reinvent musical forms and sustain Afrobeats as a genre.