In October 2021, Wizkid’s smash hit, Essence featuring Tems made history by being the first Nigerian song to break the Top 10 on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart. The song also bagged Wizkid and Tems a Grammy nomination.
The afro beats star, this morning at his headline concert at the Livespot X Festival expressed his excitement over the success of the song.
In his words, “How can a young, small boy from Ojuelegba, Surulere make a song with another girl from the same Lagos Nigeria and that song goes all the way to sell one million copies in America? That same song also got nominated for a Grammy award. That same song got on the top ten of the Billboard Hot 100 Chart. The gag of the story is the same person that made that sae song is one small boy from Ojuelegba.”
Wizkid has indeed come a long way from his 2011 breakthrough to becoming the most-streamed Nigerian musician in the world.
His album, Made In Lagos, has hit 1 billion streams worldwide less than a year after its release. On Apple Music, the album has 322 million streams, 229 million on Spotify, and 227 million on YouTube. It has also gained over 140 million streams on Audiomack, over 40 million on Boomplay, and 20.1 million on Pandora.
Watch the video below;