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Nigerian recording artiste, Divine Ikubor who is otherwise known as Rema has admonished his colleagues to desist from demeaning the music genre, Afrobeats so as to embrace the South African-owned music genre, Amapiano.

In recent years, several Nigerian musicians have embraced the Amapiano beat, also, some notable artistes such as Wizkid and Burna Boy have come out to claim they no longer affiliate with the Afrobeats genre.

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Speaking in an interview with Apple Music, Rema admitted that amapiano is a great genre but maintained that Nigerian artists must sustain afrobeats’ influence on the continent.

He noted that his recently-released sophomore album, ‘HeIs,’ was heavily inspired by afrobeats legends like Don Jazzy and the Mo’hits crew, 2Baba, Olamide, P-Square and Timaya.

“I had to go back [while creating my new album]. I took a lot of inspiration from Mo’hits. For the first four seconds, when a Mo’hits’ song comes in, you already know it’s a Mo’hits’ song. Don Jazzy just goes crazy on the beat,” he said.

“The times when Olamide used to drop crazy songs, he still drops crazy songs. At the time when an Olamide song comes on you still know. P-Square, 2Face or Timaya. There used to be times when the beat just…

“Amapiano is great, it is fire but there used to be a time when Afrobeats production used to be so insane that nothing can survive it in the clubs in Africa. I’m not saying we’ve lost that but I’m just saying that we need more of that. I don’t want us to go too far away from that. We need to sustain it.”