Music producer and singer, Phillip Kayode Moses, popularly known as Pheelz has embraced the Afrobeats tag which he described as the spirit of the Nigerian people.
Pheelz addressed the Afrobeats tag in an interview on the Afrobeats Podcast hosted by Adesope, where he shared his thoughts on the situation of artists choosing to disassociate with the Afrobeats tag.
According to the hitmaker, Afrobeats is a movement fuelled by the spirit of Nigerian and African people.
He shared that while some artists have the right to either choose to associate or disassociate with the movement, he identifies with the movement and will gladly wave its flag.
He said:
“For me, I feel like it’s a tag for how we make our music. It’s a form of identifying what we do and where we are from. To some degree, it’s a form of collective decision by us Africans or Nigerians or the culture that let us move with this. So I choose to respect that collective decision and be part of that consciousness and boldly and proudly wave this flag.”
On whether the “Afrobeats” tag is restricting, Pheelz stated that being an Afrobeats artist doesn’t preclude him from making genres.
Commenting on the cases of artists rejecting the Afrobeats tag, Pheelz said:
“Now is the time to even educate the world on what we have and what light we bring because the whole attention is on us. This is the time to teach, collaborate, and come together to save this light.”
Recall that some artists like Wizkid dissociated themselves from the afrobeats umbrella, stating how they are versatile and shouldn’t be boxed into one genre.
During the interview, Pheelz narrated how he got to collaborate with American RnB superstar Usher on his latest album Coming Home’.
According to Pheelz, it was a surreal moment getting to work with one of the artists he idolizes and whose music greatly inspires him.
