Babes Wodumo may not yet have won any South African Music Awards for her hit song Wololo, but her luck may change internationally.
She has been nominated alongside seven other African artists for this year’s BET Awards to be held in June, the only African female artist in the Best International Act: Africa category.
Wodumo released a video on social media at the weekend complaining about award shows in South Africa not giving her song any recognition even though it received a lot of airplay and trended throughout the country after it was released last year.
The Durban Gqom star is up against rappers Nasty C and AKA as well as Nigeria’s Davido and Wizkid, who are both previous winners in the category; Mr Eazi; and Tekno, whose hit song Pana made waves across the continent.
Ghana’s Stone- bwoy, another previous winner, rounds up the nominees.
I’m Babes Wodumo, says Jessica Nkosi
It has been 17 years since the BET Awards started.
Beyoncé is leading the pack with seven nominations, including Best Female R&B/Pop Artist and Best Collaboration for her song Freedom with Kendrick Lamar.
Beyoncé is also in the running for Video of the Year and Album of the Year for Lemonade.
Bruno Mars has been nominated in five categories including Best Male R&B/Pop Artist and Video of the Year for his funky work on 24K Magic.
Cassper, Black Coffee back Babes on #Dololo
Solange Knowles, who will be headlining the first-ever two-day AfroPunk festival at Constitution Hill in Joburg in December, is up against her sister, Beyoncé, in the Best Female category. She has three other nominations.
Independent star Chance the Rapper and Migos also have four nominations. Chance could scoop the Best New Artist award while Migos is also a strong contender for Best Collaboration for the hit song Bad and Boujee with Lil Uzi Vert.
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Last year, Black Coffee took home the Africa award and was the first South African to do so. He was up against hip hop acts AKA and Cassper Nyovest as well as Diamond Platnumz, MzVee, Yemi Alade, Wizkid and Serge Beynaud.
A post shared by Somizi (@somizi) on May 29, 2017 at 10:26am PDT
The award category became a permanent feature in 2011.
If Babes Wodumo hits this jackpot, she will not only be the first South African female to win the award, but also the first African female to do so. The awards ceremony will take place on June 27 in Los Angeles.