The Dream ; Beyoncé scrapped an entire Fela Kuti Album

Afrobeat might seem an unexpected genre to
appear on a list of Beyoncé’s musical
inspirations. Even so, she had put together a
series of unreleased tracks taking their
musical cues from Nigerian multi-
instrumentalist and afrobeat legend Fela Kuti,
according to producer and Single Ladies co-
writer The-Dream.
“We did a whole Fela album that didn’t go
up,” The-Dream wrote, in an entry for
Beyoncé song End of Time on lyric
annotation site Genius . “It was right before
we did [album] 4 . We did a whole different
sounding thing – about 20 songs. She said she
wanted to do something that sounds like
Fela.”
The single End of Time incorporated elements
of afrobeat, according to The-Dream. He also
shed some light on Beyoncé’s creative process,
referring to the common practice in music of
writing far more material than will ever
appear on an official release.
“There’s always multiple albums being made.
Most of the time we’re just being creative,
period,” he wrote. “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.”
In other Genius entries, The-Dream also went
into some detail on his contributions to hit
singles like Beyoncé’s Single Ladies, Kanye
West’s All of the Lights, and Justin Bieber’s
Baby, featuring Ludacris.

The Guardian