Wizkid’s 12 billion Spotify streams: How afrobeats’ Starboy built a global legacy

There are some career milestones that arrive with a loud celebration. Others quietly reveal just how far an artist’s music has travelled.

For Wizkid, the latest number attached to his name is almost difficult to picture. It sits somewhere between the millions of listeners, years of releases and songs that have travelled far beyond the places where they were first made.

But numbers can only tell part of a story. Behind them is a career that began with a young Lagos artist finding his voice and grew into something much larger than the Nigerian music scene he first entered.

The 12-Billion Mark

Wizkid

On October 26, 2026, reports emerged that Wizkid had surpassed 12 billion Spotify streams across all credits, making him the first African artist reported to have reached the milestone. The figure includes songs on which he is the lead artist as well as tracks where he appears as a featured performer.

Kworb’s October 25 data put Wizkid’s total at 11.66 billion streams, while other reports credited him with crossing 12 billion. The difference does little to change the larger picture because Wizkid has spent years building a catalogue large enough to keep producing streams across different generations and different parts of the world. And the latest milestone did not come out of nowhere.

Wizkid

Before The Billions, There Was Starboy

Long before Spotify became one of the main ways audiences measured the reach of African music, Wizkid was a young singer trying to establish himself in Lagos.

Born Ayodeji Ibrahim Balogun, Wizkid began his professional music career in the late 2000s and broke through with “Holla at Your Boy” in 2010. The song became one of the records that introduced a new young voice to Nigeria’s pop scene. It was followed by his debut studio album, Superstar, in 2011.

The album helped establish the identity that would follow him for years: Wizkid, Starboy, Baba NlA.

The Recording Academy describes “Holla at Your Boy” and Superstar as the breakthrough that launched his career. From there, his catalogue continued to grow through projects including Ayo in 2014 and Sounds From the Other Side in 2017. But even before the biggest international records arrived, Wizkid was already developing a sound that travelled well beyond Nigeria.

From Ojuelegba To The World

One of the songs that best represents Wizkid’s early journey is “Ojuelegba.” Released on Ayo, the song was rooted in Lagos and in the experiences that shaped Wizkid before international fame. Its success also showed that his appeal did not depend entirely on the glossy pop formula that often dominated mainstream music.

The song eventually received a remix featuring Drake and Skepta, creating one of the early links between Wizkid’s Nigerian audience and the international music world. That relationship with Drake would soon become much bigger. In 2016, Wizkid appeared alongside Drake and British singer Kyla on “One Dance.” That song changed the scale of the conversation.

Then Came One Dance

“One Dance” was released in 2016 and became one of the defining global pop records of the decade.

It topped the Billboard Hot 100 for 10 weeks and became a major streaming phenomenon. On independent Spotify tracking, the song has now passed 4.5 billion streams, making it the biggest single contributor to Wizkid’s streaming total. That number matters, but so does what happened around it.

For listeners who had never encountered Wizkid before, “One Dance” became an introduction. His contribution to a Drake-led global hit put his voice in front of audiences that Nigerian music had struggled to reach on that scale.

The story could easily have ended there, but Wizkid’s career did not. Instead, he began building a catalogue that would give international listeners reasons to return to his own music.

Essence Gave The World Another Reason To Listen

Four years after “One Dance,” Wizkid released Made in Lagos on October 30, 2020. The album marked another important stage in his career. It was not built around proving that Wizkid could make international music. By then, that question had already been answered.

Instead, Made in Lagos presented a more mature version of the artist. At its centre was “Essence,” his collaboration with Tems. The song initially appeared as part of the album but grew into something much larger in 2021, when a remix featuring Justin Bieber introduced it to an even wider pop audience.

“Essence” eventually became the first Nigerian song to reach the Top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at No. 9. The Recording Academy later described Made in Lagos as a project that helped sustain Afrobeats’ mainstream rise in the United States, while “Essence” became one of the songs most closely associated with that movement.

The difference between “One Dance” and “Essence” is important. “One Dance” showed that Wizkid could contribute to a global hit. “Essence” showed that a Wizkid record could become a global hit in its own right.

A Catalogue Bigger Than Two Songs

Wizkid

It would be easy to reduce Wizkid’s Spotify story to “One Dance” and “Essence”, but the numbers do not allow that.

Kworb’s October 25 tracking data lists 238 Wizkid-associated tracks, with more than 3.46 billion streams from songs where he is the lead artist and more than 8.18 billion from tracks where he is credited as a feature.

Beyond “One Dance” and “Essence,” the catalogue includes songs such as “Joro,” “Come Closer,” “Energy (Stay Far Away),” “Brown Skin Girl,” “Ginger” and many others.

As of October 25, “Essence” is placed at more than 407 million streams, “Joro” at more than 177 million, and “Come Closer” at more than 191 million.

The figures continue to change as people listen. That is part of what makes the 12-billion milestone significant. It is not simply a snapshot of one successful period. It is the accumulated weight of years of music.

The Albums Kept The Story Moving

After Made in Lagos, Wizkid released More Love, Less Ego in 2022. Two years later came Morayo, another chapter in a career that had by then moved through several different versions of Afrobeats and Nigerian pop.

The importance of those projects is not only found in their first-week numbers. They added more songs to a catalogue that already had an international audience. That catalogue continued to work in the background, with older songs gathering new listeners while newer releases created fresh entry points.

It is one of the less obvious reasons Wizkid’s streaming numbers have remained so strong: his audience does not have to choose between old Wizkid and new Wizkid. There is a decade and a half of music to explore.

The Milestones Came Faster

The road from one billion to 12 billion did not happen at the same speed. But 2026 showed just how quickly Wizkid’s numbers could climb.

In January 2026, he was reported to have become the first African artist to cross 10 billion Spotify streams across all credits.

By May, he had reportedly crossed 11 billion. That milestone came shortly after the release of “State of Mind,” his collaboration with longtime associate DJ Tunez. The song reportedly recorded more than 685,000 Spotify streams globally within its first day.

The progression was striking, from 10 billion in January, 11 billion in May and a reported 12 billion in October.

In less than a year, another two billion streams had been added to a figure that had already taken years to build.

The Starboy Who Kept Evolving

Wizkid

Wizkid’s longevity is also tied to his willingness to work across generations. In January 2026, he joined Asake for REAL, Vol. 1, a four-track joint EP featuring “Jogodo,” “Turbulence,” “Alaye” and “Iskolodo.”

The pairing was significant beyond the music itself. Asake belongs to a younger wave of Nigerian artists that emerged after Wizkid had already become an international star. Working with him created a connection between two eras of Nigerian music.

That connection says something about Wizkid’s position in Afrobeats. He is no longer just an artist from one generation but has become part of the bridge between them.

More Than A Spotify Number

Wizkid’s global reputation is not built on streaming alone. He has worked with artists including Drake, Beyoncé, Chris Brown and Tems, among others, and his music has repeatedly moved between Nigerian, African and international audiences.

His Grammy record adds another layer. Wizkid has one Grammy win and six nominations. His win came at the 63rd Grammy Awards in 2021, when “Brown Skin Girl,” his collaboration with Beyoncé and Blue Ivy Carter, won Best Music Video.

He later received Grammy nominations in 2022 for Best Global Music Performance (“Essence” ft. Tems) and Best Global Music Album (Made in Lagos: Deluxe Edition). In 2025: Best African Music Performance (“MMS” with Asake) and in 2026 Best African Music Performance (“Gimme Dat” with Ayra Starr). These all came after his first nomination in 2017 for Album of the Year (as a featured artist on Drake’s Views). These achievements sit alongside the streaming numbers rather than beneath them.

Together, they show an artist whose influence has been measured in different ways through awards, charts, collaborations, audience growth and the continued life of his catalogue.

What 12 Billion Says About Wizkid’s Legacy

The most interesting part of Wizkid’s latest milestone may not be the number itself. It is the distance between where he started and where his music now exists.

The young artist who introduced himself with “Holla at Your Boy” eventually had a song with Drake sitting among Spotify’s biggest records. The singer behind “Ojuelegba” later released “Essence,” a song that crossed into the American mainstream. The Starboy of the early 2010s became a Grammy-winning artist whose music could move between Lagos, London, New York and other major music markets without losing the identity that made it distinctive.

And through all of that, the catalogue kept growing. That is why 12 billion is more than a large streaming figure. It is a marker of time that captures songs released at different stages of Wizkid’s career, collaborations with artists from different parts of the world and listeners who discovered him at very different moments.

It’s safe to say Wizkid’s music has travelled a very long way from the Lagos streets where the Starboy story began.

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