How Swahili Langauge helped Diamond PlatinumzThe 1st Sub-Saharan African artist hit 1B YouTube Views

Tanzanian singer Naseeb Abdul alias Diamond Platnumz has been rising from strength to strength to become among the most successful African artists in African entertainment history.

The upbeat dance music video which was premiered on November 30, 2020, garnered over a million views on YouTube within the first 8 hours of release. With this milestone, Diamond Platinumz has dethroned Nigerian singer Davido whose song Fem got over a million views in the first 9 hours on its debut.

Sometime in June, Diamond was named the first Sub-Saharan African artiste to hit 1 billion views on YouTube, overshadowing Afrobeat singers Davido, Wizkid, and Burna Boy whose numbers are 618 million, 507 million, and 480 million respectively.

Unlike many Nigerian and South African popular artists, the majority of Diamond songs are in pure Swahili. This gave us the idea that the Swahili language is among the widely used languages across the world. To put this into context, there are between 60 and 150 million speakers of Kiswahili worldwide, according to the University of Arizona’s Critical Languages Programme. This is a good number looking at it from a business point of view.

Our entertainers and creative content makers from East Africa need to understand the power behind their language and capitalize on it.

Below is a list of song collections that helped Diamond reach the coveted milestone of 1 Billion views on YouTube:

1. Innos’B Ft Diamond Platnumz- Yope Remix, 60 million views.

2. Diamond Ft Mr. Flavour – Nana, 59 million views.

3. Harmonize Ft Diamond Platnumz –Kwangwaru, 58 million views.

4. Diamond Platnumz Ft Fally Ipupa – Inama, 47 million views.

5. Diamond Platnumz Ft Omarion- African Beauty, 44 million views

6. Diamond Platnumz Ft NE-YO –Marry You, 40 million views.

7. Diamond Platnumz Ft Davido – Number One Remix, 39 million views.

8. Diamond Platnumz- Sikomi, 39 million views.

9. Rayvanny Ft Diamond Platnumz- Tetema, 37 million views.

10. Diamond Platnumz ft Rayvanny –Salome, 31 million views.

Diamond's achievement is a wake-up call to many upcoming entertainers who seem not to believe in their own story and language but rushing to copy what others are doing out there. "We can't be them. We are different and they will appreciate our unique and authentic content."Almasi M. Ndangili.

I truly hope our current and the next generation of creative artists will put much emphasis on their own language and story and package their artistic content accordingly

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