Much ado about stealing songs among artistes

By Tofarati Ige

The quest for creating a hit song is no doubt a herculean task. In recent times, the Nigerian music scene has been rife with accusations and counter-accusations of artistes stealing their colleagues’ songs.

Dancehall sensation, Black Face of the defunct Plantashun Boyz recently accused Wizkid of stealing his song, “Ojuelegba.” According to him, “I never really wanted to talk about it all this while but after people started checking out my new song, Killa, many felt Blackface sounded like Wizkid, which I didn’t like. If you check properly, you would realize that Wizkid’s hit sounds exactly the same as the track 13 on my dancehall album released as far back as 2010.”

In the same vein, 2face is not spared from the accusation of song theft by Black Face. He has alleged that his former band mate, 2face stole “Let somebody Love You” from him and threatens to sue the African Queen sensation.

Recall that “Let somebody love You”was one of the songs contained in 2face’s Ascension album and which featured Bridget Kelly. Black Face who is a sucker for controversy took to Twitter to express his dissatisfaction.

“You have been avoiding me and hiding behind your mask, recording my songs without my consent and taking out my credits. You singing “Let somebody love you’ without telling me when you know it’s my song isn’t going down.”

Few weeks back, another song theft tale started on Twitter when Dammy Krane accused Wizkid of stealing lines of his ‘Ojulegba’ song from him. Wizkid responded by allegedly throwing a bottle at Dammy Krane at Quillox, a popular night club.

Music producer Shizzi has also accused Tunde Ednut of stealing the instrumental of a song he produced. The hit-maker claimed that Tunde Ednut allegedly stole the instrumental to make a new song titled “Kosowo” produced by MasterKraft. Shizzi didn’t engage in any social media rant. Instead, he took the battle the legal route, writing through his lawyers and telling Tunde Ednut and Masterkraft to take down all the downloadable links of the song and stop promoting it.

Paul Okoye, second half of the pop group PSquare, took to Instagram to weigh in on the song theft drama. In a tongue-in-cheek manner, he said the artistes accusing their colleagues of song theft are looking for cheap publicity.

“I am supposed to mind my business, but this is part of my business. The people complaining that their songs have been stolen, where did they keep the songs? 2016 is a year of cheap publicity,” he said.

Recall that in times past, artistes like Davido, Wizkid, Sean Tizzle, Skales and others have been accused of song theft.