Dancehall artiste, Charles Nii Armah Mensah Jr widely known as Shatta Wale is upset with the country’s music industry suggesting it is one which has created animals out of the country’s musicians.
According to the self-acclaimed Dancehall king, industry players in Ghana believe artistes can only make money once they fight each other, a situation he believes has led to an increased number of artists fighting each other in order to stay relevant.
“Why do people think if there is no beef I can’t make money? Samini’s beef was the strongest beef ever in Ghana. My rivalry with Stonebwoy is at the kindergarten level but the one I had with Samini was tough, it was one of the greatest beef I ever had in Ghana and it was good. It was just that Samini didn’t see it to be pushing the business agenda, we could have made bad money from it. People should just understand me that I didn’t come into this business to beef, it is our industry that has created us to be like these animals so we are fighting ourselves every time,” he said on Onua FM.
He added, “Just listen to Nigerian songs and our songs. Nigerians will sing about money, woman and others but Ghanaians will just go on and boast in their songs about what they have achieved and that is why I sang ‘borgor’ because those things are not taking us out there. We are always fighting for titles, names, positions and they are not really helping our industry”.
Shatta Wale was recently in the news for recording a ‘diss’ song for BET award-winning rapper, Sarkodie, titled ‘little tip’ in which he rained insults on the rapper, claiming he lives a ‘fake’ life.
His long-standing feud with his colleague Dancehall artiste Stonebwoy landed both of them in the police custody after a brawl ensued between the two at the 2019 Vodafone Ghana Music Awards.
Speaking on the events of that day, Shatta Wale said ending up in police custody wasn’t as bad as many thought since he is an ‘ex-convict’. He added that the situation also compelled him to take a much needed rest.
“The inmates I met wanted to treat me so special but I told them since I am in cells, we are all in the same house and so nobody is special there. I had a chat with them and they asked me questions about how I am making it, and about my music but I slept very well because I actually wanted to go on a vacation so that thing was a vacation for me so I had a one-day vacation and it was so nice,” he noted.
Even though he and stonebwoy appear to have smoked the peace pipe since, Shatta Wale insists that he did nothing wrong to warrant an apology.
Due to the unfortunate incident at last year’s VGMA, the two artistes have been banned by the organizers of the event, Charter House and, as expected, have been excluded from the list of nominees in the 2020 VGMA awards.
