Chinese rap star Kris Wu who bumped Ariana Grande off iTunes charts is accused of using bots

As the Twittersphere tries to figure out who Kris Wu Yifan is, allegations swirl that the Canadian-Chinese singer – huge in China but little known in the west – encouraged his Asian fan base to use bots to boost the performance of a new album, knocking American pop stars including Ariana Grande and Lady Gaga off the top spots on iTunes in the US.

Wu came under fire after his new album Antares, released last Friday, took up six spots in the top seven songs in the iTunes’ US chart over the weekend, blocking Grande’s new single, which came out a day later in the fourth spot.

On Monday Grande’s Thank U, Next managed to move up to the second spot, trailing Wu’s November Rain.

Known in China and Asia as a pop-rap phenomenon and an ex-member of the hugely popular Korean-Chinese boy band Exo, Wu has 45 million followers on Weibo, China’s social media platform, but only 158,000 followers on Twitter whose service is banned in China. However, western music fans on Twitter, some of whom have never heard of Wu, accused the artist of using bots to push his tracks higher on the charts.

A tweet allegedly from Scooter Braun, manager of Grande and Justin Bieber, claimed on Sunday that Wu and his management used bots to manipulate the iTunes sales charts. Braun later said the tweet sent under his name was fake and that he did not know Wu. Both tweets have since been deleted, but screenshots of them were circulated.

Wu has remained active on social media since the controversy, promoting his new work on both Weibo and Twitter. On Tuesday he posted a video clip of his new single and talked about the album as a special gift to himself and his fans, the artist’s 28th birthday.

Wu’s management team did not immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.