The Most Outrageous Wizkid Scandal
Ayodeji Ibrahim Balogun, popularly known as Wizkid, has always been one of Nigeria's most sensational artists. Right from his days in E.M.E, he succeeded in capturing the hearts of Nigerians and the music industry at large. The Nigerian-born singer has been on a consistent wave of steady success ever since the release of his hit single, "Hollatcha boy" in 2010. With over 35 awards to his name, both locally and internationally, the African legend's most recent album, "More love, less ego" has been topping charts since its release in November 2022.
Over the course of his music career, Wizkid has been involved in a lot of scandals with each more outrageous than the last, but the most outrageous of them all has to be his baby mama saga. A proud connoisseur of women, Wizkid is the father of four beautiful children from three different mothers.
In 2018, his first baby mama, Shola Ogudu, ruthlessly called out the Grammy Award winner for neglecting their child, Boluwatife. In a series of bitter posts on Instagram, she accused the singer of being a poor excuse for a father who only pretends to be a good father on social media while being nothing of the sort in reality. She went further to post screenshots of her chats with him and her fellow baby mamas including Wizkids newest love, Jada Pollock.
It was a field day for social media inlaws and fans who rose to the occasion and engaged in heated online debates on who was wrong and who was right. Some tagged Wizkid as a deadbeat dad and condemned his attitude towards his child while some others insisted on hearing the singer's side of the story before passing judgment. Throughout the entire saga, not a peep was heard from the King of nonchalance as Machala stayed on the low, only coming online to inquire about where he could get some Nigerian food in Milan and generally appeared to be unbothered by the entire incident.
Five years after the ugly incident, the Essence crooner has continued to make waves in the music industry. The scandal certainly didn't stop him from going on to add to his litany of hits and also performing at the O2 arena in London in 2021 with fast-rising singer Tems, where he stirred controversy once again by attempting to lift the Grammy award winner onstage. Netizens had quite a feast analyzing the incident with some even going as far as accusing him of sexual assault.
However, his co-artist on the monster hit that was Essence, Temilade Openiyi came to his defense and called for calm after she declared that everything was fine and WizKid was like a brother to her.
After taking some time off social media drama, he returned to the scene in 2022 when he and his baby mama Jada, seemed to have some trouble in paradise as they were both seen posting cryptic messages on their social media accounts. The two lovebirds stirred break-up rumors after Wizkid shared a post on Snapchat, stating he has “Been single for so long! Gotta find one or two.”
Jada on the other hand reacted: “Taking arguments to social media is never going to end well.” Eventually, she came out to assure fans that all was well. The mother of two shared photos from their New York dinner outing to celebrate the release of Wiz’s latest album: ‘More Love, Less Ego’
Not one to care about drama, Wizkid recently called out Nigerian rappers for doing poorly in their genre in an interview with a foreign magazine late last year. The king of Afrobeats insisted that the rap genre in Nigeria was dead and not worth listening to. According to him, he doesn't listen to rap because it is tiring, boring, and dead. He further went on to say that South Africas Nasty C and Ghana's Black Sheriff were the only African rappers worthy of note in his dictionary.
Naturally, a number of Nigerian rappers including Blaqbonez and MI Abaga were unhappy with the singer's assertions and made several social media posts criticizing the artist's comments. Although this caused quite a buzz on the Internet, it cannot be compared to the massive outrage that his baby mama saga generated.
A man of the people, Wizkid is certainly no stranger to scandal and controversy. Despite all of the drama, he continues to thrive and shower Nigerians with the beautiful music that they all love.
By Ijah Juliet.