American singer and one-half of the hip hop duo Rae Sremmurd, Swae Lee, has shared that he has Nigerian heritage.
The rapper made this revelation while addressing the controversy surrounding a tweet in which he announced his intention to explore the popular South African genre, Amapiano. In the tweet, he added a Nigerian flag emoji, which led to backlash from South Africans who felt their country’s contribution to Amapiano was being overlooked.
Swae Lee clarified that the Nigerian flag emoji was included because he has Nigerian roots, and it was not meant to discredit South Africa or wrongly credit Nigeria. He expressed his respect and appreciation for South Africans as the creators of the genre.
He wrote: “For the ones outraged about the flag, I put it because I’m partly Nigerian. I didn’t say anything about the creation of the genre y’all tweaking. Bigs up to the South Africans for creating this beautiful sh*t.”