CKay turns 31 today, and the timing could not be better for a look back at how far the Kaduna born, Lagos raised singer has travelled since his days as a little known Chocolate City signee.
From band kid to Chocolate City
Chukwuka Chukwuma Ekweani grew up in Kaduna to Igbo parents from Anambra State, with his love for music shaped early by his father, a church choir conductor who taught him piano. He started out in a small band before launching a solo career, moved to Lagos in 2014, and joined the Chocolate City roster in 2016. His 2018 single “Container,” built around South Africa’s gwara gwara sound, became his first real breakout in Nigeria. The following year, he released the EP CKay the First, home to a slow burning love song nobody thought much of at the time.
The song that changed everything
That song was “Love Nwantiti,” and its journey from overlooked album cut to global phenomenon remains one of the most remarkable stories in Afrobeats. Ckay himself has said the label barely took the track seriously when he first sent it over, since it was not a fast song, but two years and a viral TikTok challenge later, it became his first Billboard Hot 100 hit. It went on to become the first Afrobeats or Nigerian song to debut on the Hot 100 without first appearing on the Bubbling Under chart.
The records kept stacking up. “Love Nwantiti” led the inaugural Billboard U.S. Afrobeats Songs chart in 2022 and climbed as high as No. 2 on the Billboard Global 200. In the United States alone, it has been declared the highest selling Nigerian song, now standing at eight RIAA platinum certifications with over 6.5 million units. On Spotify, it became the first African song to cross one billion streams, a feat that earned it the label of the biggest hit in African history. By June 2022, Ckay had reached 1.2 billion streams overall, briefly the second most streamed African artist behind Burna Boy.
Before the song’s global explosion, Ckay had already made his own quiet history. In October 2021, he became the first African artist to cross 20 million Spotify monthly listeners.
Building a catalogue beyond the hit
Ckay did not let “Love Nwantiti” define him as a one song act. His debut studio album, Sad Romance, arrived in September 2022 through Warner Music Africa, featuring Ayra Starr, Davido, Focalistic and Mayra Andrade, and was followed by a North American tour. Its lead single “Emiliana” performed strongly across Europe and Africa. A second studio album, Emotions, followed in October 2024, again through Warner Music Africa.
2024 also marked a business milestone. That August, Ckay and his childhood friend Joseph Salubi launched Boyfriend Music, a publishing and management company with an American arm, built to support other artists, songwriters and producers. By April 2025, he had exited Warner Music Africa at the end of his record deal, and by May had signed a new partnership with AWAL, under which he released the EP CKay the Second that June, featuring Sabrina Claudio and Bella Shmurda.
Along the way, the recognition has piled up too, from a Headies nomination for his collaboration with Ayra Starr on “Beggie Beggie,” to honours at the BMI London Awards, a Brit Awards nomination for Best International Song, and shortlists at the AMAs, Soul Train Awards and MOBOs.
Closing in on the 3 billion club
Perhaps the clearest measure of how far Ckay has travelled sits in his Spotify numbers. In the days leading into his birthday, his combined streams across all credits climbed to 2.99 billion, putting him on the very edge of an elite tier of Nigerian artists. That threshold has since been crossed. CKay has now officially passed 3 billion streams across all credits on Spotify, becoming the ninth Nigerian artist to reach the mark. He joins Wizkid, Burna Boy, Rema, Tems, Asake, Davido, Ayra Starr and Omah Lay in that company, a list that reads like a roll call of Afrobeats’ biggest global exports. For an artist whose breakout single was once dismissed as too slow for the label, it is a full circle moment worth sitting with.
Banger Boy, The Album
Ckay used the days around his birthday to confirm his third studio album. Titled Banger Boy, the 12-track project is set for release on August 7, and its guest list is one of the most eclectic he has assembled yet, pulling in Mavo, Kidd Carder, Phyno, Maleek Berry and Ghana’s King Promise. The recent single “E Clear,” produced by BMH, sits as the eleventh track on the album and follows his charting collaboration with Kidd Carder, “African Girls,” which appears earlier in the tracklist. Details on the rest of the tracklist remain under wraps. Still, the spread of collaborators alone is enough to keep anyone anticipating the day of its drop.
It is a fitting way to mark 31. The same artist who once struggled to convince his own label that a slow, overlooked song was worth pushing now sits three billion streams deep, with a fresh album on the way to prove the growth was never a fluke.