Senegalese-American singer, Aliaune Damala Badara, popularly called Akon has revealed that he played a crucial in bringing Nigerian Afrobeats star Ayodeji Ibrahim Balogun, also called Wizkid into limelight.

According to Akon, Wizkid was just a local musician before he signed him to his record label in 2008 and brushed him up.

Speaking in a recent episode of the Bagfuel Brigade podcast, Akon also claimed that Afrobeats would not have been what it is today without him developing some artists in Nigeria.

He also stated that he opened up bigger international markets for Nigerian artists in the late 2000s to 2010s.

“In 2008, I spent my time in Nigeria developing what you see today as Afrobeats. And all of them can attest to it,” he said.

“Wizkid was the first artist we signed officially at that time. And then we went on to sign a group called P-Square, which was the first group that made it internationally.

“Wizkid was just the local Nigerian star before we touched him and it opened up to a bigger market. I wouldn’t want to take credit for all of it but I can tell you that if we didn’t do what we did, Afrobeats would still have been in the same position it was when we got there [Nigeria in 2008]. That I can tell you 100 per cent.

“I brought the business side of music to Afrobeats because all they knew about was the creative. There was no business, no infrastructure, none of it attached to it,” he said.