How Much Did Wizkid Pay For Billboard Nominations?

On May 15, 2022, the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas hosted the 2022 Billboard Music Awards.

Sean “Diddy” Combs, together with Robert Deaton, hosted and executive produced the award.

On April 8, 2022, nominations for 62 categories were published online via Twitter for songs released between April 10, 2021 and March 26, 2022.

Fortunately, Nigerian afrobeat musician Ayodeji Ibrahim Balogun, better known by his stage as Wizkid, was nominated for a Billboard Music Award for his hit song “Essence,” which features Justin Bieber on the remix.

Along with Doja Cat, Silk Sonic, Given, and Justin Bieber, the hit song “Essence” was nominated for the Top R&B Finalist Category.

Unfortunately, he lost to Silk Sonic, an R&B duo who won their first Billboard Music Award for Top R&B Song.

Some rivalry fans have taken to social media mocking the afrobeat heavyweight champion, who has one of the greatest albums to ever come out of Africa.

The fans accused Wizkid, who began recording music at the age of 11, of paying $100,000,000 to be nominated for a Billboard award in 2022.

Read what a popular Twitter user known as Ruddeyy said below.

“So According to wizkid aide Godson, they spent close to $200k just to get billboards award nominations and yet he lost again. This is what happens when your career is built on Payola and features.”

Another person also went as far as creating a fake Twitter account with the name Billboard Music Award, and he made a tweet saying: 

“Congratulations to all of our winners so far! Tune in to the #BBMAs TONIGHT at 8PM ET/5PM PT on NBC and Peacock to see how @wizkidayo and @jada3_p paid $1m for billboard nominations”

There are dozens of similar tweets like that, but we can’t post everything here.

The question now is…

Did Wizkid pay to get billboards award nominations?

No, Wizkid didn’t pay to get nominated for the billboards award.