Wizkid

Wizkid, born Ayodeji Balogun in 1990, had his first real global moment as a feature — 'One Dance' with Drake in 2016 topped the charts in 15 countries, a strange way to become famous but an effective one. The bigger milestone came later and on his own terms: 'Essence,' with Tems, became the first Nigerian song ever to chart on the Billboard Hot 100 in 2020, the moment Afrobeats stopped being a crossover novelty and became something the American charts had to actually account for. Two songs, four years apart, and between them they map the whole arc of how this music reached the rest of the world.