Burna Boy vs Davido vs Wizkid – who is the greatest?

Burna Boy, Wizkid and Davido have transformed Nigerian pop and taken Afrobeats global. But their rise has also fuelled a long-running contest over who can claim the title of Nigeria’s biggest pop star. Oris Aigbokhaevbolo traces a decade of breakthroughs, setbacks and one-upmanship.

Twenty years ago, it would have been difficult to imagine Nigerian music dominating clubs, radio and playlists across Europe and America. Today, Burna Boy, Davido and Wizkid – Afrobeats’ so-called “Big Three” – command global audiences, rack up hundreds of millions of streams and sell out major venues.

They did not begin as rivals. Davido once credited Wizkid with inspiring a generation of artists, while a young Burna Boy can be spotted in the background of one of Davido’s early videos. But as their profiles grew, so did the competition, usually expressed through achievements, fan wars and veiled shots on social media.

“They speak subtly with their achievements and their music,” says entertainment business consultant James Silas. “Burna Boy has said before that he should not be counted among the Big Three, he’s way beyond their league!”

Internationalising Afrobeats

The clearest starting point for their global race is 2016. Davido signed with Sony Music early that year, declaring: “My number one aim is to make my fans and Africa proud.” Wizkid signed to the same label months later, with at least one report calling the deal ‘record-breaking’. Burna Boy joined Warner Music via Atlantic Records in 2017.

It became clear that the global introduction of Afrobeats was well underway, as a continental genre sailed westward.

“Having the platform of those big companies made them more visible,” says Silas.

Davido had the early advantage, but his first international EP, Son of Mercy , struggled. “The songs were not great,” says Nigerian pop culture commentator Ayomide Tayo. “He was focused on hitting a mark with the American audience, and it didn’t work.”

Wizkid’s Sounds from the Other Side performed marginally better, while Burna Boy’s 2018 album Outside made the strongest artistic impression. It produced fan favourite ‘Heaven’s Gate’ with British artist Lily Allen, and ‘Ye’ , which gained an unlikely streaming boost from sharing its title with Kanye West’s album.

“In terms of pushing new art into the global scene, Outside is the best album of the three,” Tayo says.

Davido, meanwhile, rebounded from the relatively muted reception of Son of Mercy with a formidable run of Nigerian hits – ‘If’, ‘Fall’, ‘Fia’ and ‘Like Dat’ .

But by then, domestic dominance was no longer enough. The Big Three were increasingly judged by international reach, and as their rivalry reached its full swing by 2019, other sounds were popping up on the scene.

Changing sounds

Alte , or alternative sound, was gaining buzz, and the Big Three began to incorporate eclectic, shapeshifting sounds into their music. Davido recruited an artist named Wurld and scored a minor hit with ‘Sweet in the Middle’ from his A Good Time album.

But ‘ Essence’ changed the picture.

Wizkid’s 2020 collaboration with Tems became a global smash and changed assumptions about what Nigerian artists needed to break into Western pop.

Rather than relying on a major American feature, ‘Essence’ showed that the truth ran in a different direction: it took two artists to make the song that truly introduced Nigeria to the Western pop music market, creating one of Afrobeats’ defining crossover records.

‘Essence’ did wonders for Wizkid in the rivalry (and for Tems, whose international music career, depending on your perspective, can be said to have barrelled past the Big 3).

Burna Boy – who calls himself the ‘African Giant’ – answered with achievements of his own. In 2021, Twice As Tall won the Grammy for Best Global Music Album, a victory that put his name in the history books as the first Nigerian solo artist to win a category at the music industry’s biggest awards event. Wizkid also won that night for his contribution to Beyoncé’s ‘Brown Skin Girl’ .

But if Wizkid and Burna Boy have scored significant hits outside of their own shores, Davido’s influence has had a force of its own. He featured on ‘ Hayya Hayya (Better Together)’, the first single from the Qatar 2022 World Cup soundtrack and later signed a deal with PUMA.

Wizkid has also expanded beyond music. In 2023, he became the first African artist to headline a sold-out Tottenham Hotspur Stadium in London – it became an HBO documentary. The same year, he received an honour from the BRITs after surpassing one billion UK streams.

But Burna Boy is the undisputed streaming lead in the rivalry. On Spotify, he has more than 60m monthly listeners, dwarfing the combined numbers of Wizkid (17.5m) and Davido (11.7m).

A measure of his international reach could be seen at the just-completed 2026 World Cup, where he appeared twice. First, he performed the event’s official theme song ‘Dai Dai’ alongside Colombian star Shakira at the opening ceremony and again at the final game’s halftime show. “And Nigeria didn’t even qualify for the World Cup!” says Silas.

Indeed, as it stands, the numbers – both on streaming and in shows performed the world over – are on Burna Boy’s side in the Afrobeats rivalry.

Still, the story of the Big Three is bigger than deciding who number one is. Together, they have helped turn Nigerian pop from a regional force into a central part of global music.

“The Big 3 had a fierce ambition to push Nigerian music beyond Africa and countries where we have a large diaspora,” says Tayo. “When you think of the global music market – ‘Ojuelegba Remix’, ‘Fall’, ‘Ye’, ‘Last Last’, ‘Essence’ – those are the records that pushed Nigerian music.”

The rivalry continues, but so does their shared legacy.

So who, in your estimation, is the Baba of the Big Three?

The post Burna Boy vs Davido vs Wizkid – who is the greatest? appeared first on New African Magazine .