The business of songwriting is a very important aspect of music making. All around the world, major artistes like Rihanna, Drake, Lady Gaga, Beyonce, Justin Bieber, etc have at one point or the other in their careers, employed the services of a songwriter. Sia wrote “Diamonds” for Rihanna, Party Next Door wrote DJ Khalid’s hit single “Wild Thoughts” feat. Rihanna and Bryson Tiller, Neyo wrote “Irreplaceable” for Beyonce and Wizkid wrote “One Dance” for Drake.
Songwriting is a serious one for artistes and record labels that are willing to grow and deliver the very best for their fans and music listeners. Songwriting constitutes the composition part of a song under intellectual property law and a songwriter is regarded as a co-owner of a song, which entitles such writer to royalties and licensing rights on the song. In a more structured music environment, there are even artistes that are fully into recording and vocals only, while songwriters are employed to provide them with the lyrics needed.
A lot of artistes in Nigeria do not recognize the value of a songwriter and hence keep churning out songs that do not stand the test of time. Most Nigerian Artistes do not have album writing camps or creative writers they work with. This is evident in the mediocre music that is being released by most A-list Artistes these days.
The few songwriters we have in Nigeria like Clems, Peruzzi, Harrysong, Ceeza Milli, Yonda, Kiddominant, Moelogo etc, are not given proper recognition and remuneration, which is equivalent to the enormous service, work and value they offer. Most of them are not even credited as writers of the song as seen in the case of Harrysong under Five Star Music where he wrote majority of the songs for Kcee including the smash hit “Limpopo”.
David Adeleke popularly known as Davido is however a stand out case in the industry. Following a scandal with upcoming artiste Password over the song “Gobe”, Davido has learned and grown to be one of the very few Artistes in Nigeria that has given cognizance to songwriters as it pertains to proper credits, royalties as well as social media shout-outs. Davido has also over the years been one of the Nigerian Artistes that has employed the services of songwriters consistently.
Some of the songs Davido has employed and credited songwriters include but not limited to:
Runtown on Aye. Peruzzi on Assurance, Nwa Baby, Fia, Holy Ground, So Crazy, Risky. Yonda on Fia, Intro and Like Dat. Shaydee on Greenlight Riddim. May D on Something Special. Oritse Femi on Return. General Pype on Gbagbe Oshi. Teni Entertainer on Like Dat. | WurLD on Sweet In The Middle and Blow My Mind. Adekunle Gold on One Milli. Kiddominant on One Thing, The Money, Fall, Dodo and D & G. P2J on Get To You. Password on Gobe. Tekno on IF. Dammy Krane on Pere, Skelewu. And many more……. |
The singer jokingly stated that at least he wrote Shekpe (as a response to critics saying he doesn’t write his own songs) during an IG Live in April 2020 between Peruzzi and Kiddominant, two of his songwriters jokingly stated.
Nigerian artistes should educate themselves on the rights of the songwriters in a song and the songwriters themselves should do same. Artistes and songwriters alike should get in touch with entertainment lawyers and intellectual property experts that will guide on the artistes part, the dangers of not properly crediting songwriters and disregarding them, while also educating songwriters on their rights and privileges, and the need for them to start asking for credits to be given to them, except their agreement with the artistes is ghost writing.
Other Nigerian artistes should emulate this behaviour from the DMW helmsman and recognize that the act of employing songwriters doesn’t mean an artiste is not talented, but instead shows an artiste that knows his/her craft, wants to deliver good music and is in conformity with the industry standard practice evident in music scenes across the world.