Social media, especially Twitter was taken by surprise after an alleged impostor with the stage name ‘Wisekid’ pulled a fast one on unsuspecting Wizkid fans.
The artiste, Wisekid, born Hosea Yohanna, was alleged to have uploaded a replica of Wizkid’s ‘Made in Lagos’ album on Apple music, thereby diverting traffic to his music.
The tracklist of the replica album dubbed ‘Lasgidi Made’ shares an identical title to Wizkid’s album, hoodwinking unsuspecting music lovers, especially Wizkid fans.
What appeared surprising was most streamers either did not notice the difference or clicked on his album in error.
Checks by The Nation also revealed the dubbed album had amassed over nine million streams translating to a profit of about N30 million monthly, equivalent to $78,729 in streams and sales revenue being shared with him.
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This was brought to the notice of the public when fans shared screenshots of their Apple Music replay.
A Twitter user, Chemical Brother, shared screenshots and stated that even after listening to Wizkid for over 26 hours, Apple Music distributed the traffic to both Wizkid and Wisekid.
According to African Facts, Wisekid has been raking in N30million monthly from Digital stores since he uploaded the replicated album in October 2020.
However, reacting to the allegations, Wisekid said he knows nothing about the development, adding that Freeme Digital has been the one distributing all his songs.
“Please I am not the one distributing Wizkid’s album on Apple Music. I have my company that distributes my music for me so I know nothing about this news spreading all over the internet. Thank you.
“I don’t know who does that. I just accessed my apple artist name I saw streams I just wanted to get people to check me out nothing more. I didn’t share Wizkid’s streams. I don’t know who did that,” he added.
But Freeme Digital, in a statement denied, distributing Wisekid’s music.
“It has come to our notice that an artiste by the name of ‘Wisekid’ claims to distribute an album titled ‘Lasgidi Made’ with our organization. While it is true that he distributes some of his contents through our organisation, we will like to make it categorically clear that the said, ‘Lasgidi Made’ album was not distributed via our platform,” the statement read.
Freeme Digital added that “we will be deleting the rest of Wisekid’s content on our platform and we have informed our legal team to immediately commence investigation on the issue and prosecute the matter to the full extent of the law.”
Social media users, especially Wizkid fans, while calling out the artiste, wondered how he pulled the stunt on many unsuspecting fans listening to Wizkid’s song on digital stores by Refixing all Wizkid’s ‘Made In Lagos’ album.
A Wizkid fan wrote: “The part that killed me is that he did not even try this with upcoming artistes or smaller artistes… Wizkid Really Dfkm.”
Another fan added, “I don’t even know what to say about this. You mean WizKid and his entire management had no idea of this? Not even his record label? I’m so angry right now.”