American rapper and member of the Rae Sremmurd duo Swae Lee unsettled a lot of Twitter users when he insinuated that Amapiano originates from Nigeria.
The No Flex Zone hitmaker shared a tweet where he excitedly gushed over Amapiano, adding that he couldn’t wait for people to hear him on an Amapiano song. The only mistake he made was to add a Nigerian flag at the end of his tweet, leaving South African Twitter users thinking he was claiming that Amapiano originated from Nigeria.
Wait till y’all hear Swae Lee on Amapiano ??
— Swae Lee Lee Swae (@SwaeLee) July 11, 2023
Twitter users were quick to jump in, explaining to the Black Beatles singer that Amapiano was from Mzansi.
Amapiano belongs to south Africans fam
This is the second international artiste making this mistake ??♂️
Give the right people their props— Iamdavejr (@iamdavejr) July 11, 2023
Rapper Nasty C also jumped in to explain that Amapiano wasn’t a Nigerian-originated music genre.
Amapiano is south African that’s a wrong flag??♂️
— Nasty C Feed (@NastyC_Feed) July 11, 2023
SwaeLee on Amapiano with a Nigerian flag?, wait so you disrespect South Africa ?? ?
— ???????? ????????? (@Alexander_mufc) July 11, 2023
Swae Lee came back to explain that he wasn’t saying the genre originated from Nigeria, adding that he used the flag as a symbol of his ethnicity since he has Nigerian blood.
I didn’t say it belonged to anyone I’m Nigerian that’s why I put it but big ups to SA for creating it fasho ????y’all added a whole mother context to my tweet insane fr I never said anyone created it in that tweet just said I got amapiano vibes otw and they sound Raw y’all got…
— Swae Lee Lee Swae (@SwaeLee) July 12, 2023
For the ones outraged about the flag I put it because I’m part Nigerian I didn’t say anything about the creation of the genre y’all tweaking
— Swae Lee Lee Swae (@SwaeLee) July 12, 2023
He also sent out a video where he explained that he meant no disrespect to the originators adding that the flag was not meant to take away anything from Mzansi.