Nigerian rapper, Panshak Henry Zamani, widely known as Ice Prince, asserts that his 2011 track ‘Oleku,’ featuring Brymo, is the inaugural song to be classified as “Afrobeats.”
He mentioned that he and his team opted to append an “s” to Afrobeat, a term coined by Fela Kuti, to distinguish their novel sound when promoting ‘Oleku’ to global radio stations.
Ice Prince clarified that Ghanaian-British disc jockey, DJ Abrante, is often acknowledged for popularizing the term Afrobeats because he included ‘Oleku’ in his playlist, highlighting that the DJ employed the Afrobeats label based on the guidance of him and his team.
Speaking in a recent interview with Echoo Room, Ice Prince said: “‘Oleku’ was one of the first songs to be playlisted on BBC Radio. One of the first Afrobeats songs to be playlisted. And at that time, 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.
“Check the history, ‘Oleku’ was the first Afrobeats record. Because they have to label it on a radio station, that was why we put the ‘s.’ 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!”
“Oleku is actually the first Afrobeatsssss”
– IcePrince Zamani
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— ? @????????????? (@OneJoblessBoy) December 28, 2023