Blaqbonez and Asake’s “Ikebe 3000” has reached No. 1 on the Official UK Afrobeats Chart. The song, which debuted at No. 2, moved up one spot in its fourth week on the tally to claim the top position, giving Blaqbonez another major marker in a year that keeps adding them.
Released on October 2 alongside the announcement of his fifth studio album, “Ikebe 3000” wasted no time making noise. It held the No. 1 spot on Spotify Nigeria for days, topped Apple Music Nigeria, and debuted at No. 5 on Billboard’s U.S. Afrobeats Songs chart. The UK, where Blaqbonez has built a loyal and growing audience, answered with a No. 2 debut on the Official Afrobeats Chart, and the climb to the summit has followed the same steady pattern.
The song’s UK momentum has been backed by moments on the ground. Blaqbonez previewed his new album at a listening party in the UK, where fans sang “Ikebe 3000” word for word barely two weeks after its release. On the eve of the album’s release, he joined Asake on stage at The O2 during one of Asake’s sold-out shows and performed both “Ikebe 3000” and “Chanel” to a packed arena.
“Ikebe 3000” is the second collaboration between the two friends, who go back to their undergraduate days at Obafemi Awolowo University. Their first, “Chanel”, became the song of Blaqbonez’s career. It spent four consecutive weeks at No. 1 on the Official Nigeria Top 100, gave him his first chart-topping single in Nigeria, became the fastest song by a Nigerian rapper to reach 10 million Spotify streams, and peaked at No. 5 on Billboard’s U.S. Afrobeats Songs chart. Both records now sit on Nomadinho: 4th Prime, the 15-track album that arrived on October 16 with features from Asake, Victony, Ruger, TML Vibez, Igwe Aka and Monochrome.
What the UK result confirms is that the Blaqbonez and Asake pairing travels. Two songs in one year have taken a Lagos rapper and a Lagos street-hop star from Nigerian streaming charts to the top of Afrobeats charts in London and a place on Billboard in the United States. For Blaqbonez, whose catalogue passed 700 million career streams earlier this year, it is more proof that the crossover between hip-hop and Afrobeats he has pushed for years is landing at scale.
The timing is just as good. He closes out 2026 with a new album in the world, a No. 1 record in the UK, and a headline slot at Elite Fest on December 21 at the Balmoral Convention Centre in Lagos. It has been a year of firsts for Blaqbonez, and “Ikebe 3000” at No. 1 in the UK is the latest.