Grammy award-winning artist, Wizkid, has received a Recording Industry Association of America, RIAA, gold certification for his hit song Essence. It went gold on September 2 after selling an equivalent of 500,000 copies, including both streaming equivalent and physical sales.
Wizkid’s third baby mama, and manager, Jada Pollock made this known via her Instagram page on Thursday.
The song becomes his second to be certified this year after his 2017 song, Come Closer, featuring Canadian rapper, Drake, was certified platinum and gold in the UK and Australia respectively in April.
In 2020, Wizkid became the first African artiste to be certified Gold in the United States, after 500,000 units of Come Closer was sold.
Featuring Tems, Essence was released in October 2020 as the 11th song on Made in Lagos, Wizkid’s fourth studio album. The song has since caught the attention of American stars such as Snoop Dogg and Kylie Jenner, Essence became popular with the American audience earlier this year.
Meanwhile Wizkid joined American superstar Justin Bieber as a guest artist during the recently-held Made in America music festival to perform his hit single Essence. This comes after they collaborated on the remix of the record and the two performed it for the first time on stage in Philadelphia.
Essence has been having an amazing run on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. It has equally appeared in the Top 100 sections of many countries on Apple Music. In July, Wizkid became the first Nigerian artist to have a record on the Billboard Hot 100 chart when Essence, which features Nigerian singer Tems, broke into the chart at No. 82.
It rose to No. 70 the next week and to No. 67 the next. Last month, he appeared on the top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart and also became the most Shazamed song in the United States for the week in review.
It’s currently on No. 13 on Billboard 100 and also No. 1 on the Billboard R&B chart which means Wizkid has a number one record in the United States of America.
