Banky W: 50 Cent inspired my ‘Ebute Metta’ song — NOT Rihanna

Banky W, the Nigerian singer cum politician, says 50 Cent was the inspiration behind ‘Ebute Metta’, his hit single, and not Rihanna as widely assumed.

The singer was speaking about the 2008 hit song during an episode of the ‘Afrobeats: The Backstory’ documentary tagged ‘American Dream and Local Rappers’.

The documentary which centers on the history and rise of the Afrobeats genre premiered on Netflix on Thursday. It was produced by Ayo Shonaiya.

Listen to ‘Ebute Metta’ below:

Banky said ‘Ebute Metta’ was inspired by 50 Cent due to the fact that the US rapper was — at that time — known for using popular beats to promote his mixtapes.

The politician said he decided to also do the same with ‘Ebute Metta’ while adopting the beat for Rihanna’s 2007 hit song ‘Umbrella’.

Listen to Rihanna’s ‘Umbrella’ below:

“2006, 2007 was when 50 Cent was blowing up and he had this promotional strategy of doing mixtapes,” he said.

“So he would take the hottest songs on the radio, take the instrumentals and then change the words and make funny versions or crazy versions or whatever of them.

“And he built his buzz in America to the point that by the time ‘Get Rich or Die Tryin’ dropped, it was like insane. So I was like okay, I’m going to do the same thing. The first one I did was ‘Ebute Metta’, the ‘Umbrella’ by Rihanna remix.”