Blaqbonez: Artists Are More Than Streams and Charts

Nigerian rapper Emeka Akumefule, popularly known as Blaqbonez, has cautioned music fans against judging artists solely by their streaming numbers or chart positions, stressing that such metrics can be easily manipulated.

The Back in Uni crooner made the remark while responding to a fan on X (formerly Twitter) who accused him of hypocrisy for celebrating his diss track “ACL”—directed at Odumodublvck—after it reached number one on Apple Music Nigeria.

Blaqbonez clarified that he had never dismissed the significance of charts but maintained that they should not be the only yardstick for measuring an artist’s success.

“I never talked down on the charts, it’d always be exciting but no artist should be defined by it. Most of the artists I’m currently listening to in Naija are not up on our charts,” he wrote.

He further criticised the industry’s obsession with numbers, saying that fans are often quick to label artists as failures based on statistics that do not always reflect true quality.

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“You guys are quick to label someone a failure depending on numbers that we know can easily be manipulated. Use your ears sometimes — if something is good, it’s good,” he added.

Blaqbonez has been vocal in recent months about the use of bots and artificial streaming to inflate chart positions in Nigeria’s music industry.