November 26, (THEWILL) – South Africans on social media have called out Spotify for using Nigerian Afrobeats singer, David Adeleke, popularly known as Davido, as the cover for its Amapiano playlist on the streaming platform.
Amapiano, which originated in South Africa in 2012, is a fusion of deep house, jazz, and lounge music, and features expansive percussive basslines.
The genre stands out with its high-pitched piano melodies, Kwaito basslines, low-tempo 90s South African house rhythms, and incorporates percussions from another local subgenre of house music known as Bacardi.
Afrobeats, in contrast, is a music genre predominantly embraced by West African artists and gained popularity in the early 2000s.
Spotify recently revealed Davido as the cover for the playlist of the South African music genre, captioning it, “Amapiano To The World, Join the global amapiano movement with tracks and artists pushing amapiano on the global stage. Cover: Davido.”
The move, however, received backlash from many South African music lovers, some of whom expressed their dissatisfaction on various platforms.
An X user wrote, “@Spotify What is this? Why are you mixing Amapiano with other genres? Whoever you got to compile this playlist must be fired & you should hire a South African to compile these playlists. There are Amapiano Afrobeats and Afroyano, don’t mix them into one thing and say it’s Amapiano.”
“@Spotify I’m cancelling my subscription with immediate effect. Amapiano was born and bred in SA,” another user wrote.
Other users and Amapiano lovers questioned why Spotify would use the original Amapiano artistes as the cover of ‘Amapiano Rising’ and use a whole different music genre as the cover for Amapiano itself.
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