African popular music, like African traditional music, is vast and varied. Most contemporary genres of African popular music build on cross-pollination with western popular music. Many genres of popular music like blues, jazz, salsa zouk, and rumba derive to varying degrees on musical traditions from Africa, taken to the Americas by African slaves. These rhythms and sounds have subsequently been adapted by newer genres like rock, rhythm and blues. Likewise, African popular music has adopted elements, particularly the musical instruments and recording studio techniques of western music.

Afropop or Afro Pop is a term sometimes used to refer to contemporary African pop music. The term does not refer to a specific style or sound, but is used as a general term to describe African popular music.

Cuban music has been popular in sub-Saharan Africa since the mid twentieth century. It was Cuban music that more than any other, that provided the initial template for Afropop. To the Africans, clave-based Cuban popular music sounded both familiar and exotic.The Encyclopedia of Africa v. 1. states:

Anthony Mackie (born September 23, 1979) is an American actor. He has been featured in feature films, television series and Broadway and Off-Broadway plays, including Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Drowning Crow, McReele, A Soldier's Play, and Talk, by Carl Hancock Rux, for which he won an Obie Award in 2002.

In 2002, he was featured in Eminem's debut film, 8 Mile, playing Papa Doc, a member of Leaders of the Free World. He was nominated for Best Supporting Actor at the 2009 Independent Spirit Awards for his role in The Hurt Locker. This is Mackie's second ISA nomination, the first coming for his work in 2003 in Brother to Brother, where he was nominated for Best Actor. Also in 2009, Mackie portrayed rapper Tupac Shakur in the film Notorious. He appears in the 2011 Matt Damon film The Adjustment Bureau where he plays Harry Mitchell, a sympathetic member of a shadowy supernatural group that controls human destiny.

Mackie was born in New Orleans, Louisiana, the son of Martha G. and Willie Mackie. He attended the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) and graduated from the high school drama program at the North Carolina School of the Arts (NCSA) in 1997. He later graduated from the Juilliard School's Drama Division as a member of Group 30 (1997–2001), which also included actors Tracie Thoms and Lee Pace.

Wyatt Cenac ( /ˈwaɪ.ət sɨˈnæk/) is an American stand-up comedian, actor and writer. He is currently working as a correspondent and writer on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.

Cenac was born in New York City, and attended high school in Texas at the Jesuit College Preparatory School of Dallas. While in elementary school, he became friends with comic book writer Brian K. Vaughn, who also introduced him to comic books. He attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before moving to Los Angeles to further his career.

Having previously worked for three years as a writer and story editor on King of the Hill, Cenac garnered public attention in a The Doomed Planet comedy sketch in which he did an impression of then-senator Barack Obama, discussing possible campaign posters. He was considered for a role on sketch show Saturday Night Live in which he would have portrayed the Democratic presidential candidate, but was passed over in favor of Fred Armisen.

In June 2008, Cenac was hired as a correspondent and writer on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. After making several comedic appearances along with other correspondents, Cenac filed his first field report on July 21, 2008, concerning Democratic Presidential nominee Barack Obama. He continues to integrate satirical Black-oriented material in his Daily Show segments, including "Rapper or Republican". In October 2009, he worked with rapper Slim Thug on the music video "Still a Boss", a parody of how the recession is affecting the rap community. Cenac appeared in the lead role in the indie movie Medicine for Melancholy, an independent film released in 2008 that explores issues of African-American identity and gentrification in San Francisco.