Afrobeat might seem an unexpected genre to appear on a list of Beyoncé’s musical inspirations. Even so, she had put together a series of unreleased tracks taking their musical cues from Nigerian multi-instrumentalist and afrobeat legend Fela Kuti, according to producer and Single Ladies co-writer The-Dream.
“We did a whole Fela album that didn’t go up,” The-Dream wrote, in an entry for Beyoncé song End of Time on lyric annotation site Genius. “It was right before we did [album] 4. We did a whole different sounding thing – about 20 songs. She said she wanted to do something that sounds like Fela.”
The single End of Time incorporated elements of afrobeat, according to The-Dream. He also shed some light on Beyoncé’s creative process, referring to the common practice in music of writing far more material than will ever appear on an official release.
“There’s always multiple albums being made. Most of the time we’re just being creative, period,” he wrote. “We’re talking about B, somebody who sings all day long and somebody who writes all day long. There’s probably a hundred records just sitting around.”
In other Genius entries, The-Dream also went into some detail on his contributions to hit singles like Beyoncé’s Single Ladies, Kanye West’s All of the Lights, and Justin Bieber’s Baby, featuring Ludacris.
Genius, formerly known as Rap Genius and recognised for annotations on rap songs, now contains sections on pop music, literature and law. Former New Yorker pop critic Sasha Frere-Jones joined the company as an executive editor in January. Since then, users ranging from producer Rick Rubin to author Michael Chabon have joined the site to add their own annotations.
