Four African artists have achieved this milestone, with two doing so as lead acts.
Tyla Joins Elite Billion-Stream Club With “Water”
BY Henry-Damian Justice
February 21, 2025
5:21 pm
South African music star Tyla has reached a major career milestone with her breakout single “Water,” cementing her place in global music history.
As of February 19, 2025, the Amapiano-infused anthem—released in 2023 and running just three minutes and twenty seconds—had surpassed one billion streams on Spotify, making Tyla only the fourth African artist to achieve this feat.
The exclusive club of African artists with billion-stream songs began with Wizkid, who hit the mark in 2016 through his feature on Drake’s” One Dance.” Rema followed seven years later with “Calm Down (Remix)” featuring Selena Gomez.
Tyla was on the verge of becoming the first female African artist to reach this benchmark, but Tems beat her to it by mere weeks, on February 16, 2025. Tems achieved the feat as a featured artist on Drake and Future’s “Wait For You,” which crossed the billion-stream mark.
Despite this, Tyla’s achievement stands apart. Of the four African artists who have crossed the billion-stream threshold, only two—Tyla and Rema—did so as lead acts. Even more impressively, Tyla is the first and only African artist to achieve it as a solo act.
Since its release, ” Water” has been a game-changer for the 23-year-old, winning her prestigious awards, including BET, MTV VMAs, MTV EMA, and the inaugural Grammy Award for Best African Song Performance. The Water remix featuring Travis Scott also peaked at No. 7 on the US Billboard Hot 100.
Other African artistes closing in on the 1 billion record. CKay’s “Love Nwantiti” (original “ah ah ah” version) is within touching distance with its 927 million streams as of the time of this writing. While multiple versions of “Love Nwantiti” have already surpassed a billion cumulatively, the milestone for the original version would further solidify CKay’s legacy.