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Fela Kuti & Burna Boy make Rollingstone 200 singers of all time list
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Burna Boy, Fela named among RollingStone’s ‘200 greatest singers of all time’
Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti and Afrobeats legend Burna Boy both made the list of the top 200 singers of all time on the list published by Rollingstone on January 1, 2022.
Rollingstone, one of the world’s major music publishing platforms, has issued a list of 200 artists they believe are the greatest of all time.
According to the publishers, the performers were evaluated based on their creativity, influence, depth of their back catalogue, and breadth of their musical legacy.
The list, which was released on January 1st, featured a number of well-known American vocalists, such as Kelly Clarkson, Toni Braxton, and Aretha Franklin.
Burna Boy the Grammy-winning megastar whose music is taking Afrobeats to the global stage was placed at NO. 197.
The singer of “African Giant” was referred to by Rolling Stones as “an ambassador of Afrobeats as a global movement.”
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Describing Burna Boy, Rollingstone said:
“A Nigerian cultural giant, Burna Boy is the ambassador of Afrobeats as a global movement that can feel equally at home climbing the European charts and maintaining a subtle emotional connection with past African genres like highlife. Burna’s voice is sweet like caramel, but it can also soar on slickly produced tracks like his recent megahit “Last Last,” or the 2019 gem “Anybody,” amped up by deep bass accents and insanely sophisticated polyrhythms. His vocal lines find inspiration in everything from hip-hop and R&B to hooky pop and dancehall — the world is his playground”
Fela Anikulapo Kuti who is the icon behind Afrobeat and a musical deity in Africa was placed at NO. 188. Rollingstone describes Fela Kuti as:
“Fela Kuti’s iconic songs of the 1970s and 1980s are sprawling orchestral instrumentals, an innovative swirl of African highlife, American soul, and jazz. Through his music, he shared an anti-colonialist, Pan-African vision and challenged Nigeria’s corrupt military government, which routinely subjected him and those around him to immense harm. Yet it wasn’t just Fela’s lyrical rebellion that makes him so important — it’s the way his voice carried his vision; the way he sang, his tone commanding and direct, plain and firm. His stern but conversational melodies made his movement more accessible. On 1986’s “Teacher Don’t Teach Me Nonsense,” where he tackles whitewashed education and failed governments, he coos, “I say, I sing, I beg everyone to join my song.” And he performed in such a way that they could”
The inclusion of Fela and Burna Boy captures the success and impact of different eras of Nigerian music in Africa and the world.