Guess what! Fela inspires Beyonce

Who would have guessed that a number of Beyounce’s songs were actually inspired by the late legendary king of Afrobeat music, Fela Anikulapo-Kuti.

Beyonce’s song writer, The-Dream revealed in a recent interview that he recorded an entire, unreleased album with Beyonce prior to 2011 LP 4, inspired by Fela. According to the producer behind hits “Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)” and “Run The World (Girls),” the project was inspired by Nigerian Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti.

“We did a whole Fela album that didn’t go up,” Terius Nash (his real name) wrote in a lengthy annotation to the lyrics of “End Of Time.” “It was right before we did 4. We did a whole different sounding thing, about twenty songs,” he continued. “Beyonce said she wanted to do something that sounds like Fela. That’s why there’s so much of that sound in the ‘End of Time’.”

“There’s always multiple albums being made,” The-Dream wrote. “Most of the time we’re just being creative, period. We’re talking about B, somebody who sings all day long and somebody who writes all day long. There’s probably a hundred records just sitting around.”

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