WOW: Guess who absolutely DOMINATED Kenyan music in 2011?

I recently saw a post by my fellow blogger Wamathai, talking about the 8 most watched YouTube videos in Kenya in 2011. It was your standard run of the mill end of year post, and perhaps Wamathai hurriedly looked at the YouTube charts for Kenya to come up with his observation.

However, it must be noted that the YouTube charts are incredibly flawed when it comes to sorting videos by location.

Apart from the YouTube users who outrightly lie about their physical location, YouTube’s charts also don’t take into account diasporans, who despite being Kenyan, have to upload their videos from abroad.

So I went and did a survey of my own to compare with Wamathai’s, and was pleasantly surprised. The top video on YouTube in 2011 according to his quick search was ‘Churchill’, with 190, 000 views. But according to my research, ALL of Stella Mwangi’s videos in 2011 surpassed this view count. As a matter of fact, if you made an actual list of top Kenyan videos of 2011, STL would come in the top three all by herself! There was no Kenyan musician who could touch STL’s brand power on YouTube. Check out the stats for yourself:

STL’s ‘Haba Haba’ performance at the Melodi Grand Prix took in a WHOPPING 1.7 MILLION views. This is more than 3 times the number of views than the next most famous Kenyan artist of 2011(Jaguar with Kigeugeu). Apart from that, she went on a historic run in the prestigious Eurovision concert, where she was performing Haba Haba to a panel of judges.

She scored a HUGE collaboration with Mohombi for her latest song, Hula Hoop, which is honestly my favourite local song right now. This video is also blowing up on YouTube right now, with 320, 000 views and counting…

Lookie Lookie was also a massive club banger, and has clocked more than 420, 000 views on YouTube so far.

So Wamathai, my friend, perhaps it was time you updated that list of yours? 🙂