Afrofuturism
Afrofuturism is a cultural movement that imagines Black life through science fiction, technology and space, and in music it names artists who build on those ideas.
As a music label it is a theme and not one sound, covering jazz, funk, soul, R&B, hip hop and electronic records that use space-age imagery, synthesizers and stories about other worlds and futures. The idea is usually traced to the space-themed jazz of Sun Ra and the science fiction funk of Parliament-Funkadelic in the 1970s. The word itself was coined by the critic Mark Dery in 1993.
Artists it is known for: Sun Ra, Parliament-Funkadelic, Janelle Monáe.
- Family
- R&B & Soul
- On Spotify
- No longer returned by Spotify’s API
- What it is
- A broad heading
- From
- United States; term coined 1993
- Trackify listeners who play it
- 13%
About 11,000 of 83,000 Trackify listeners with public profiles have afrofuturism among their top artists of the last four weeks. Rounded; updated 13 November 2026.
Afrofuturism artists
Steve Lacy
FKA twigs
Erykah Badu
Thundercat
Solange
Kelela
Kevin Abstract
WILLOW
Digable Planets
Janelle Monáe
The afrofuturism artists most Trackify listeners have in their top fifty. Each opens on Spotify.
Sources
The definition is written for this site from open sources, and was checked against them on 13 November 2026.