Ayodeji Balogun the Nigerian afrobeat singer popularly known as Wizkid picked up another win at the Soul Train Music Awards for Best Collaboration for his Grammy-nominated song ‘Essence’ which featured another Nigerian music singer Tems.
With Wizkid and Tems winning, the category that has previously been won by the likes of Chris Brown, Drake, Dj Khaled, Rihanna, and Young Thug has finally found a home on the African continent. He is now the first African artist to win the category.
At the time of the awards ceremony, Wizkid was performing at a sold-out O2 Arena in London with a capacity of over 20,000 people at the event and thousands of others watching from the Nigerian streaming platform Udux.
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This is the third time Balogun has won at the ceremony as he picked up wins in 2019 with Beyoncé for their song ‘Brown Skin Girl’ which picked up 2 awards for The Ashford and Simpson songwriters award and Video of the Year.
The Singer recently won Artist of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best African Collaboration both of which are for his hit song Essence at the AFRIMA awards last Sunday, and picked up 2 Grammy nominations on Tuesday 23 November 2021.
Other nominations were The Ashford and Simpson Songwriter award, Video of the year both won by Bruno Mars, Brandon Anderson, and Christopher Brody Brown for ‘Leave it open’ and Album of the year won by Jazmine Sullivan for ‘Heaux Tales’.
