Wizkid becomes first African artiste to surpass 100 million Shazams
Afrobeats superstar Ayodeji Balogun, known as Wizkid, has made history by becoming the first African artiste to surpass 100 million Shazams.
Shazam is a music recognition app that identifies songs by listening to short audio clips. When a user taps to “Shazam” a track, the app quickly matches the sound to its vast music database, displaying the song’s title, artist, and other details.
Fans widely use it to discover music, and the industry uses it to track song popularity and global reach.
Data from the artiste’s Shazam profile shows that Wizkid’s songs have accumulated 100 million Shazams across 185 charted tracks, spanning 1,230 cities in 68 countries.
Wizkid attained the feat in early November, shortly after he dropped a new three-track collaboration with DJ Tunez and DJ Maphorisa, which includes ‘Money Constant’ and ‘Abangani’.
Since its release, ‘Money Constant’ attained a #1 hit on Apple Music’s Top Songs Chart in Nigeria.
Moreover, before his latest collaboration, he released ‘Morayo’ in 2024, giving him tremendous momentum heading into 2025. The song garnered hundreds of millions of streams and spawned multiple radio hits.
Another recent project that preceded Ayodeji’s 100 million Shazams success is his collaboration with artists like Odumodublvck, Asake, and Fola, which included viral TikTok moments of these songs.
Career
Over a career spanning more than a decade, Ayodeji has steadily grown his global presence. His catalogue includes hits like Grammy-nominated ‘Essence’, global hit with Beyoncé, ‘Brown Skin Girl’ and his guest feature on Drake’s ‘One Dance’, among the most Shazamed songs in Afrobeats history.
Since debuting with Superstar (2011), the Grammy-award winner has released several successful albums, including ‘Ayo’ (2014), ‘Sounds from the Other Side’ (2017), ‘Made in Lagos (2020), and ‘More Love, Less Ego’ (2022).
His hit ‘Essence’ featuring Tems became the first Nigerian song to chart on the Billboard Hot 100, earning him global recognition.
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Over his career, Ayodeji has won numerous awards, including a Grammy, multiple BET, MOBO, and Headies Awards, and holds several streaming and chart records.
Crossing the 100 million Shazam is another metric that cements Ayodeji’s status as a global standard-setter for African music.