Wizkid needed only a few months to add another billion to his Spotify tally. The Nigerian star has become the first African artist to pass 12 billion streams on the platform across all credits, just five months after he became the first to cross 11 billion in May 2026.
The milestone surfaced on Monday through WizStatz, a music statistics account on X that tracks the singer’s streaming numbers.
The post tagged his official handle and read, “WIZKID (@wizkidayo) becomes the first African Artist to surpass 12 Billion Streams On Spotify Across All Credits.
That phrase, “across all credits,” matters here. The count covers songs where Wizkid is the lead artist, plus his collaborations and guest spots on other musicians’ tracks.
For a lot of fans, that is exactly the point. Wizkid’s career has been built on crossing borders, and some of his biggest moments have come from working with artists outside Nigeria.
His feature on Drake’s “One Dance” in 2016 put his voice on one of the most streamed songs of its era.
A few years later, “Essence” with Tems, from his 2020 album Made in Lagos, became a global word of mouth hit and picked up a remix with Justin Bieber.
He also appeared on Beyoncé’s “Brown Skin Girl,” which won the Grammy for Best Music Video in 2021.
There is another way to read the numbers, though. Totals that include features naturally reward artists who collaborate widely, and the figure comes from a fan run stats account rather than an official Spotify announcement.
That has not slowed down the celebration. African artists have spent years pushing for the kind of global streaming presence that pop and hip hop acts from the US and UK take for granted, and every new benchmark gets read as a sign of how far Afrobeats has travelled.
Born Ayodeji Ibrahim Balogun and raised in Surulere, Lagos, Wizkid broke through with his 2011 debut album Superstar.
Since then he has gone from local hitmaker to one of the faces of Nigerian music abroad, with projects like Made in Lagos and his 2024 album Morayo keeping his catalogue in heavy rotation.
The speed of this latest jump is what stands out most. Going from 11 billion in May to 12 billion by late October suggests his older hits are still pulling steady listens while newer material and features keep stacking up.
Spotify itself has not commented on the record, and Wizkid has not publicly reacted to the post.
If the current pace holds, fans tracking the numbers on X will not have to wait long before WizStatz is posting about 13 billion.
