Best Afrobeats Artist

Afrobeats with the s is not Afrobeat without it. Fela Kuti's Afrobeat was long horn-driven jams with a political charge; Afrobeats is the pop that came out of Lagos and Accra decades later, and the name got attached in London rather than in Nigeria. Fela is on this ballot anyway, because no argument about who is best gets three replies deep without someone bringing him up.

The bracket puts eras against each other on purpose. 2Baba's African Queen and D'banj's Oliver Twist were the records that made this music travel at all, and they meet artists who were in primary school when those came out. Wizkid, Davido and Burna Boy carried the middle stretch. Asake, Rema, Ayra Starr, Victony and Shallipopi arrived when the audience was already global and never had to break anything open.

Ghana is in here too, and it changes the shape of the draw. Sarkodie raps in Twi, Amaarae barely raises her voice, Black Sherif sounds like neither of them, and Stonebwoy and Shatta Wale have been arguing over the same crown for a decade. Diamond Platnumz comes in from Tanzania with a following that does not need Lagos at all.

Every candidate plays a video. Where the artist has an official one it is that, and where they do not it is the label's own upload, so what you are judging is the record rather than a photograph.