DJ Maphorisa shares how Wizkid influenced him to start making Amapiano
DJ Maphorisa is one of the biggest artists in South Africa from where the pulsating Amapiano genre started before spreading globally.
In a recent interview with BBC, the award-winning hitmaker shared the story of how he got influenced to start making Amapiano.
According to Maphorisa, Nigerian superstar Wizkid played a notable role in his journey to becoming one of the driving forces of Amapiano.
The South African revealed that he was hanging out with Wizkid in a club in Pretoria where one of the DJs played an Amapiano record that instantly caught Wizkid’s attention who asked him about the sound.
Maphorisa shared that before that Amapiano was already bubbling in South Africa’s underground scene but he never paid attention to it until the sound piqued Wizkid’s curiosity.
“I thought if Wizkid really vibe with this sound then there’s something. So he’s the one who really put me on the sound,” Maphorisa told BBC.
“Wizkid was the one that put me on Amapiano when it was still an underground sound”
– DJ Maphorisa
— BASITO (@itzbasito) January 12, 2025
Before then, Maphorisa revealed he was doing more Afrobeats and Afro House records, but Wizkid’s question influenced him to make a notable switch that would see him rise to become one of the major figures in Amapiano alongside other South African stars led by DJ and Producer Kabza De Small.
Maphorisa has earlier credited Wizkid as the first Nigerian artist to explore Amapiano after the Grammy winner was joined by Burna Boy and Casper Nyovest on Kabza De Small‘s hit record ‘Sponono’.
The hitmaker mentioned this in 2023 when Nigerian artists debated who first fused the South African import with Afrobeats.
