Beyoncé Scrapped Afrobeat Album
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] four. We did a whole different sounding thing – about 20 songs. She said she wanted to do something that sounds like Fela.â€
