Afrobeats And Its Links To US Secret Intelligence
Have you ever found yourself wondering why Afrobeats - the joyful soundtrack to the "Africa Rising" era from the late 2000s through the early 2010s - seems to have lost much of its energy and lustre of recent? Does it seem to you like the music no longer belongs to the fans and has become a distant, expensive product that nobody can relate with anymore?
You are not imagining it - in fact the reality of what has happened to Afrobeats is a lot darker than you would possibly imagine. Far from just a fresh music genre that embodied the sounds and aspirations of a new generation across the continent, it has been coopted into the arsenal of the US government's extensive foreign influence and interference tools. In fact, your favourite Afrobeats artist, as incredible as it sounds, most likely now has a handler permanently assigned to them by the US State Department.
In this special report, The Spearhead Senior Reporter Mckay Chukwu examines a story that has been hiding in plain sight for years, detailing the State Department's well-funded cultural interference infrastructure which has been deployed all over the Global South to bend entire populations and their governments toward the foreign policy goals of the US government.
Mike Benz Links CIA, U.S. State Department, UK Soft Power Funding To African Musicians And Record Labels
In this video, taken from a March 22, 2026 livestream, former US State Department official Mike Benz spotlights Nigeria's Chocolate City Music Group as one of the beneficiaries under the US State Department's little-known 'American Music Mentorship Programme' - a semi-clandestine US soft power/influence operation that co-opts music artists and record labels around the world into service to American political objectives.
Later this week, The Spearhead's @Big_Mck will be releasing a long-form piece addressing the revelations from the livestream and the wider implications of American foreign influence operations embedding themselves into cultural spaces across Africa and its diaspora.
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