MCKAY born Akorede Ezekiel Taiwo, is a South African based Nigerian hip-hop artist, songwriter and producer. Born in June 1997, He grew up in Nigeria and then later moved to South Africa in 2013.
In 2015, He released his EP titled KING n KNIGHTS that gained up to fifty thousand downloads worldwide and introduced him to fans. This single “WINNING” off the mixtape got a lot of radio plays in South Africa.
In February 2017 He announced the release of another Mixtape TRAPPIST-1. On 15th of April 2017, he dropped the first single off the mixtape titled “ LIL MOMMA” and it got good reviews from his fans and audience, from Nigeria, South Africa, Zimbabwe, USA, UK and Cyprus. This resulted in an offer from a major European record label to market and distribute his works across Europe.
The music video for Lil momma was playlisted on MAJOR TV Stations across the continent such as MTV BASE, TRACE AFRICA, SOUND CITY TV & PLANET TV.
His video titled “K” has gained over 115,000 views on youtube and also got good plays on both radio, cable and terrestrial TV stations
His debut EP TRAPPIST-1 made a lot of waves across the continent when within a few hours of release it was already on the South African chart, peaking at number 4 on the TOP 200 HIP-HOP albums in the country and number 1 album across all genres in Kenya.
The Album has now gained over 900,000 streams on Spotify in America alone and over 200,000 streams on apple music, totalling over 1 million streams in less than 5 months. He was ranked number 2 most streamed artist in South Africa by Spotify in 2018 with close to 2 million streams. He also released his sophomore EP titled TRAPPIST-2 a follow up to TRAPPIST 1 and it went on to peak at number 2 in South Africa.
His recent single BETTER DAYS was released in Jan 2020 before the covid 19 pandemic and so far has been doing great and with a video in the works it’s is bound to do even much better.
He is gearing up for a tour of his home country Nigeria as soon as the covid pandemic is brought under control hopefully soon. Meanwhile, he is working on some new materials and We are looking forward to bigger and greater things in the near future from Mckay.