100+ Million YouTube Views Club, Africa.

Views. This is one of the metrics of measurement of an artist’s success. More often than not, it is highly considered that the more views you can get, the more successful your music career is. By the time I’m writing this, we still have no Kenyan artist getting anywhere near the 100 million YouTube views mark on a single music video. 

Dusuma by Otile Brown and Meddy currently has 38 million views, the highest, by any Kenyan musical act.

Artists from countries like South Africa and Nigeria really seem to have found the secret to hitting these numbers.

Here are a couple of African Stars regularly enjoying 100M+ hits on their projects posted on YouTube.

Master KG, Nomcebo 

When the Jerusalema wave hit the world during the pandemic, it didn’t take long before everyone was dancing to the South African tune. I can bet your organization made you record one of those #JerusalemaDanceChallenge videos. Thanks to your terrible moves, Jerusalema today has 527,160,340 views on YouTube, the highest in the continent.

Burna Boy

Damini Ebunoluwa Ogulu is no stranger to success. Winning the elusive Grammy Award for his 2021 Album Twice As Tall was the icing on the cake to cement the Last Last hitmaker as a force to reckon with in the African and global music sphere.

His latest Album Love, Damini’s Last Last music video, released 5 months ago, already has 106M views.

He also has On The Low with an incredible 297 million views, Ye sitting pretty with 209 million views while Location boasts of 169 million views.

 

Innoss’B and Diamond Platnumz 

When Congolese singer Innoss’B released Yope 3 years ago, we all knew it was a gem. Going ahead and having Tanzania’s finest Diamond Platnumz on the remix was all the song needed to soar because the hit today is 3 million views shy of hitting the 200 million mark.

Wizkid

As one of the most influential artists in the world, you can never expect Wizkid to miss in categories like this. He is on this list as one of the few artists with multiple songs having crossed 100 million views.

2019’s Joro has amassed 210 million views. Come closer featuring Drake has 125 million. Fever starring Tiwa Savage recently passed the 100 million mark while last year’s Essence featuring Tems has 113 million views as of today.

Die Antwoord

The fact is that I just recently discovered this South African alternative Hip Hop group and going by the numbers I found on YouTube, they are a big deal. With 3.28 million subscribers, they rake in millions of views on the regular.

Here’s a list of their most viewed YouTube hits.

Baby’s on Fire – 265M

Ugly Boy – 191M

I Fink U Freeky – 178M

Pitbull Terrier – 131M

Banana Brain – 118M  

Davido

Very few people with billionaire parents put in as much work as Davido puts into his music. This shows in the number of hits he has out here. Davido has 2 songs on this list, Fall with 249 million views and If with 157 million.

Sinach

As the only gospel act in this club, the Nigerian singer, songwriter and senior worship leader Sinach is surely rubbing shoulders with Africa’s biggest names.

She has two songs; Waymaker and I Know Who I Am with 216 and 112 million views respsctively. 

More 100M+ Views

MAGIC SYSTEM – Magic In The Air Feat. Chawki – 391M views.

Tekno – Pana – 186M views 

Yemi Alade – Johnny – 149M views

Runtown – Mad Over You – 142M views.

P-Square – Personally – 120M views.

 

As the internet and smartphones continue reaching more people, these numbers are only expected to grow bigger and bigger. I hope a time comes when will have African artists hit 1 billion views in single videos just like the Ed Sheerans and Rihannas of the world.

 

 

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