Black Sherif's debut album has racked up more than a billion streams.

The Villain I Never Was achieved the historical record across four digital streaming platforms (DSPs) only. They are: Spotify (125 million), Boomplay (341 million), YouTube (102 million) and Audiomack (441 million).

The daring 14-track debut album, with Burna Boy as the sole guest on Second Sermon Remix, was released on October 6, 2022, just a year after First Sermon gave the singer-songwriter and rapper his first mainstream hit. 

A 40-minute listening experience, the tape provided abundant evidence for the Konongo-native's genre versatility as he told personal stories of the stubborness necessary for success, over Hiphop, Pop, Hiplife and Reggae beats, with Highlife verve. 

With 1 billion streams for his debut album, minus Apple Music and others, the 2023 BET winner is the first Ghanaian artiste to achieve this feat.

While all 14 cuts on The Villain I Never Was are hits, some songs are more popular than others, including: Oil In My Head, 45, Konongo Zongo, Soja, Kwaku the Traveller, and Second Sermon Remix.  

According to Sherif, The Villain I Never Was title, buttressed by the lyrics of all 14 songs, captures the situation where a person's intentions and actions are misconstrued for evil when they are in fact otherwise, but best known to the accused. In essence, the tape is the black sheep’s diary. Track 7, Konongo Zongo, best explains this, thus, as it reveals how young Mohammed Ismail Sherif Kwaku Frimpong disregarded the status quo and dictates of family to seek his own path. 

Released by Blacko Entertainment and EMPIRE, producers on The Villain I Never Was include Joker, Samsney, Jae5, Ghanaian Stallion, Zailor, LiTek, WhyJay, etc.

Blacko, as he is affectionately called, received wide Ghanaian recognition upon the release of his solo Second Sermon (July 2021), gaining international fame with his Kwaku the Traveller first performed at 3Music Awards (March 2022).

In 2023, the Black Entertainment Television (BET) named Blacko the artiste with the Best International Flow in Hiphop. This was only a year after the artiste lost the honour upon his initial nomination.

| BET (2023): Black Sherif on stage

In his acceptance speech, he said: "I saw this in my sleep every night. I started making music four years ago in a small city in Ghana called Konogo Zongo, and there was no way nobody was going to convince me that I wouldn't be here, that my music wasn't going global. Thank you so much BET. Thank you to God, thank you to my mom, thank you to my dad, thank you to my team, I love you guys so much."