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Claim: Popular entertainment blog Hip Hop Ville has reported that after 20 years, Nigerian rapper MI Abaga is just getting his first 1 million views on a single video on YouTube.
Verdict: False! MI Abaga has at least three more videos with one million views or more.
Full Text
Hip Hop is a fiercely competitive genre of music that drives a lot of interest and
following. In today’s world, where music is increasingly commercialised, an artist’s work is sometimes measured by streaming and viewing figures. So, artists, managers and fans typically keep count and take the score on every work that is put out.
In a continent where Afrobeat has taken over, MI Abaga is one of the few leading hip-hop artists who have largely stuck to the genre. The Nigerian who claims he is No.1 in Africa, celebrated a milestone for one of his songs on Tuesday, 13 February.
His song ‘The Guy’ which is the title of an album he released last year, just reached one million views on Youtube. In a Facebook post, MI congratulated himself and thanked his fans.
Blogs have reposted the rapper’s post, leading to misinformation about his latest accomplishment. Popular entertainment blog HipHop Ville posted about MI and claimed that this is the first time the Nigerian rapper has had one million views after being in the industry for over 20 years.
The post has had more than 3,600 interactions, from likes to comments.
In Sierra Leone, another blog known as We Blog reposted similar content with the same claim. The blog compared how fast Sierra Leonean rapper Kao Denero’s video, ‘Green Gold’, reached one million views on YouTube.
Why is this important in Sierra Leone?
Kao Denero, like MI, is also a self-proclaimed No.1 in Africa regarding the African hip-hop genre. Kao Denero has, on several occasions, done diss songs calling out rappers like Vector, Sakordie and MI himself. One of his latest songs released this year, ‘Veteran’ called out all these artists by names on the hook.
The song Green Gold that the blog referenced was done five years ago by Kao Denero, featuring RunTown.
MI has not directly responded to his diss songs over the years.
Verification
DUBAWA went through MI Abaga’s YouTube channel, checking the views on each video uploaded, going as far back as ten years ago. We found that the rapper has at least three other songs on YouTube that have had one million views or more, with the oldest on the channel being as old as eight years ago.
Four years ago, when MI and another Nigerian rapper, Vector, were dissing each other, MI did two songs around that period that met the 1 million view comparison the blogs have made.
MI’s song The Viper, a direct diss to Vector and Martell Cypher, done with Blackbonez, loose Kaynon and AQ, recorded more than a million views each.
Another song with more than a million views on YouTube is Bullion Van. It was done eight years ago, featuring Phyno, Stromex, and the same RunTown Kao featured on his track Green Gold, which also gave him a million views.
Conclusion
After a YouTube search, we discovered that the claim that MI Abaga is getting one million views for the first time in 20 years is false. MI has at least three other songs with over a million views.
