Lagos, Nigeria
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Fans of Nigerian artist CKay received a welcome gift in late January: the singer released his latest song, “Badminton.” It’s a high-energy, melodic track with an infectious sound. The song, which has been gaining traction online, continues his signature Emo-Afrobeats style, of which CKay is widely seen as the pioneer.
“Using emotional chords, minor scales a lot, very warm ambient synthesizers and instruments like guitars — electric or acoustic — keyboards, all these things together with very poetic, deep and emotional lyrics, gives you Emo-Afrobeats,” he tells CNN’s Larry Madowo in an interview in Lagos, Nigeria.
Bringing a different sound to Afrobeats isn’t the only thing the Nigerian star is doing. He, like many of his peers, would like to move beyond the “Afrobeats” label. “Afrobeats is a convenient term. I won’t say I love the term… I think over time I started to see the effects of that overgeneralization,” he says.
Artists argue that the term is limiting. Burna Boy, who blends Afrobeats, reggae, dancehall, pop and hip-hop, says he would like his music to be classified as “Afrofusion.” Wizkid, who blends his music with R&B and Afropop, has also voiced his frustration.
CKay equates the broad Afrobeats label to calling music from the West simply “Western music.” “It’s kind of like the way you can’t just call Western music White music or American beats or European beats, you know? There’s rock, there’s jazz, there’s dancehall, there’s all kinds of stuff, all kinds of sounds. So that’s the same way I feel about African music,” he says.
“I feel Africa has over 50 countries, more than 50 cultures,” he adds. “Nigeria alone has over 36 ethnic groups with different languages, food, music, rhythm. With the music, they also have their own instruments … So, coming to a whole continent and just calling everything Afrobeats, you know, if you think about that, it’s not the most apt.”
How carving his own path helped Emo-Afrobeats star CKay shatter global records
By speaking out and continuing to release genre-blending music, CKay hopes to help people better appreciate the diversity of African music. “I think for the Western world … it’s a start, to help them understand African music and obviously, when people learn more, they’ll probably learn about the different subgenres,” he says.
As he continues to showcase those subgenres, the songwriter and producer hopes to repeat past success. In 2021, during the Covid-19 pandemic, his now-megahit “Love Nwantiti” became a global phenomenon after fans started making videos to the 2019 song’s instrumental chorus. It made him the first artist to top the inaugural Billboard Afrobeats Songs chart, in April 2022.
The love ballad spent over 52 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 list, peaking at No. 3. That success was topped when the song was streamed more than 1 billion times on Spotify in December 2025, making CKay the first Nigerian solo artist to reach that milestone. “I knew it would be successful, but I just didn’t know it would be that successful,” he said. “I would say the scale of the success was something that … came as a very pleasant surprise.”
At just 30 years old, CKay has already made his mark and he has no plans to slow down. “I think consistency and being committed to the journey is key, and I like to just accept and embrace my responsibility as a trailblazer. I try to create trends, not follow them. I try to create sounds, not copy them. I try to build on the legacy and history of what our ancestors made and take it to the next level,” he says.
And as he continues down that path, the trendsetter says he wants to be remembered as someone who “innovated the sound, advanced the culture, and made the world a better place than I met it.” By all indications, he is well on his way.