From Stereotype to Cliché: Class, Gender Views, and the Cultural Archive of Modern Afrobeats

This study examines how popular social stereotype of female materialism is reinforced and legitimated in Afrobeats songs. It draws on Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) as its theoretical framework to investigate how Afrobeats artists, in their songs, echoe the social notion of female attraction to materialism. A mixed method approach that combines descriptive statistics and thematic analysis was adopted for the study. Thirty (30) Afrobeats songs released between 2015 and 2025 were purposively selected from ten prominent Afrobeats artists, while the lexical, metaphorical and repeated expressions associated with money, luxury, spending, and economic provisions were identified and coded. The findings reveal that material-related expressions traced to females are widely and consistently used across the dataset, indicating that female materialism is a recurrent ideological overtone and normalised narrative pattern in Afrobeats songs. The dominant themes through which this representation is constructed include transactional love, luxury and lifestyle, and male provider ideology. Although, it is noted that some female artists tend to provide a counter narrative of material success as self-earned and linked to hard-work and independence, their voices however are constantly dwarfed by the male Afrobeats artists, who are more dominant in the music industry. Therefore, the study concludes that Afrobeats discourse, like any form of discourse is not neutral; it is a social construct that carries societal judgements, gender prejudice and cultural stereotypes that are shaping audience perceptions of femininity, romance, and gender relations within the contemporary society.