Its standard for artists to record maybe over 100 songs when creating an album, leaving scores of tunes left on the cutting room floor and locked up in the vault. Well, The-Dream has revealed that Beyoncé not only has unreleased songs, but a yet an unreleased fully-intended album!
Last week, the mega songwriter/producer posted an annotation on Genuis.com next to the lyric of Beyonce’s single “End of Time” from her album 4, a rhythmic and tribal song. In the annotation, The-Dream explains himself, Bey and her husband Jay Z were working on an album prior to 4 that’s heavily influenced by Fela Anikulapo Kuti, a musician, political activist and the pioneer of Afrobeat music in the 1970s. Afrobeat is a mixture of traditional Nigerian and Ghanaian music, mixed with jazz, funk, and chanted vocals.
He writes, “We did a whole Fela album that didn’t go up. It was right before we did 4. We did a whole different sounding thing, about twenty songs. She 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.’”
He continued, “There’s always multiple albums being made. 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.”
Will the world ever hear this Fela Kuti-inspired album? Now that the cat’s out of the bag, we sure hope so!
