Dapper Music CEO Akinwunmi debunks claims of shady contract agreement with artists

There comes a time when silence stops being peaceful. I have spent most of my career choosing work over noise. I have never believed that every disagreement deserves a public response. My focus has always been simple: build artists, build businesses, create opportunities and leave people better than I met them.

That work speaks for itself. Lives have changed, families have been supported, artists have grown, music has travelled further, people have found jobs, and dreams that once looked impossible have become real. That is the work I am proud of.

Perhaps that is why I have found it difficult to watch what is happening now. I have remained quiet for a long time, not because I have nothing to say and not because I am afraid to speak, but because I have always believed that business disputes should be handled with facts, contracts, records and, where necessary, the law. But my silence is beginning to look like an admission to some people. There appears to be an agenda to damage my name, my character and a business we have worked very hard to build. I cannot sit quietly and allow that narrative to become the truth simply because it is being repeated online.

So, for once, I will speak.

These relationships did not begin casually, and they did not begin in bad faith. Every artist was sent their contract in advance, with time to read it and take advice on it before anything was signed, and the terms were negotiated rather than presented. From the very first meeting, Seyi Vibez was accompanied by his own legal counsel.

NSNV was distributed through Dvpper Digital; we entered into an agreement, and we paid him to make music as an investment, with a clear understanding between both parties. We also worked on the project itself. We provided A&R on NSNV, and we secured a feature for it. That is not distribution. That is a label doing label work.

In the case of Shallipopi, there were multiple witnesses present before signing, and every benefit and sign-on bonus under that agreement was paid immediately on execution. In the case of T.I Blaze, the questions being asked online have already been through a documented process, with the records and the accounts examined at the time.

Nobody was rushed, nobody was uninformed, and nobody was exploited. These relationships began because we believed in the music, the talent and what could come from working together. I want to address one claim directly, because it has been repeated so often that people have started to accept it.

The suggestion is that these artists did not know what they were signing. I do not accept that, and the record does not support it. A man who has the document days in advance, who negotiates its terms, who improves them, who takes the benefits under it on the day it is executed, and who then operates under it for years without complaint, knows what he signed.

These were not boys handed a pen. They were businessmen making a deal, and they made it. What has changed is not their understanding of the contract. What has changed is that they no longer like it.

About a month into that relationship, Shallipopi was arrested. That part is already public. What is less known is what happened next. Every contract of this kind has terms about conduct. I could have walked away that week, and I chose not to. Instead, we instructed counsel and paid for his legal representation, and we did not stop at him.

A friend of his was picked up at the same time, a young man with no contract with us and nothing to offer this company, and we paid for his representation too. Both of them came home. To be plain about what that means, we paid lawyers to do legal work. The firms were instructed properly, the fees were invoiced, and all of it is on record.

We stayed, we kept working, and we kept investing. I raise it now only because a version of events is circulating in which this company took from these artists and gave nothing back. That is not the record.

Over the years that followed, Dapper did the work of a label. We handled the administration, the logistics and the day to day machinery that keeps a career moving. We sat in on production and helped shape records. We provided A&R. We brought in songwriters and put the right rooms together. We secured features. We built the strategy behind the releases, the campaigns and the timing, and we executed it.

That work is not visible from the outside, and it is rarely the part anyone talks about, but it is the reason careers moved as fast as they did. The growth these artists experienced was not accidental. It was built, deliberately, by a team. For some of these artists, the first video that ever ran and the first time their music took them outside Nigeria came through this company. I say that as a matter of record, not as a debt anyone owes me.

Alongside that work, we invested substantially: recording, production, artwork, marketing, DJs and digital campaigns, multiple music videos shot in Nigeria, South Africa, London, Dubai and the United States, touring, including headline shows in the United Kingdom and the United States, settlement of a prior label agreement, property, rent payments, vehicles and repeated personal cash advances.

To put that in perspective, two videos for one artist, shot in America, cost this company fifty-two thousand dollars. Not fifty-two thousand naira. One of them was an announcement piece that was never officially released, so it earned nothing and was never meant to.

One trip to the United States, for recording camps and video shoots, came to over two hundred thousand dollars once flights, visas, accommodation, ground transport, and welfare for everyone travelling were accounted for. There was no show and no fee attached to it. That was money spent purely on making the work, long before anyone knew whether it would return. Every amount is documented, and every amount sits in the same accounts and statements I am inviting independent firms to examine.

I am not going to list it item by item online, because that is not how this should be resolved. I am asking for it to be counted properly, by people qualified to count it.

Something needs to be said plainly about how this works, because I do not think it is well understood. When a label finances a career, that money is not a gift, and it is not free money. It is capital put at risk before anyone knows whether a record will work. There is no collateral behind it. Nobody signs over a house.

The only thing standing behind those payments is the possibility that the music earns, and if it does not earn, the label carries the loss alone, and the artist keeps everything they were given. When it does earn, the label recovers what it advanced from those earnings, exactly as the contract sets out and exactly as the artist agreed.

Advances are recoupable, and that was set out in the agreements and communicated clearly to every artist before they signed. It is not a detail anyone discovered later. That is not exploitation.

That is the arrangement, and it is the arrangement that made it possible to spend that money in the first place. If a label cannot recover what it invests, no label will take that risk on an artist who is unknown and unproven. That is who actually loses this argument.

I should also be clearer about the figures being quoted, because I think they are being misunderstood. A catalogue revenue number is not money waiting in an account. Before anything reaches an artist, the platforms take their share, the distributor takes theirs, and the costs the label advanced are recouped from what remains. That is the order; it is written into every agreement, and it was explained before signing. The numbers being quoted online are gross figures from the top of that chain, not net earnings at the bottom of it.

The investment exceeded the earnings, the balances remain unrecouped, and what is outstanding is owed to the company, not by it.

When you place what was actually earned beside what was actually invested, these accounts do not show a label holding money that belongs to an artist. They show the opposite. I am not going to publish figures here, because figures belong in an audit and in the processes already underway, and I have invited exactly that scrutiny. But I will not let the impression stand that money was earned and withheld. It was not.

There is also a great deal being said about masters, so let me deal with it directly. When a label funds the making of a record, it holds the recording it paid for. That is not a Dapper invention, and it is not peculiar to us. It is how recorded music has been structured here and everywhere else, for one simple reason: a master is not free. Somebody paid for the studio time, the producer, the mixing, the mastering, the artwork, the video and the campaign that made anyone hear the song at all. Ownership follows that money and that risk. Anyone who has built a label in this country will tell you the same thing.

None of this was hidden or discovered later. Our position on ownership is written into the agreements; it was there before anyone signed, it was explained, and it was agreed by both sides. It was negotiated, not imposed.

Social media is not a court of law, and the person who cries the loudest is not automatically the person who is right. A tweet is not evidence. A viral video is not a judgment. Repeated insults are not arguments. If there is a disagreement about money, contracts or accounting, let us put the documents on the table. We have said this several times, and each time we are brought back to the same circle of tarnishing my name and my business.

Let me be direct about one specific claim, because it keeps being repeated.

I have not sold anyone's catalogue. Not to a distributor, not to a third party, not to anyone.

Ownership sits exactly where the agreements say it sits, and those agreements are among the documents I am asking to be examined.

I will also address the suggestion that documents were forged, because it is a serious accusation and I will not let it sit unanswered.

It is false. No signature on any Dapper agreement was falsified, and no document was fabricated. That is a matter of record; it is capable of being verified, and it will be.

I welcome scrutiny. If anyone believes Dapper has cheated them, I invite them to call for an independent forensic audit, conducted by a firm with the standing to be held to its findings, or by any other trusted auditing, accounting or legal institution with the expertise to examine the books, the contracts, the payments and the accounts.

Let the numbers speak. Let the documents speak. Tell us where we cheated you, when we cheated you and how much we cheated you, based on audited findings and not figures thrown around online. If there is evidence that we owe anyone anything, let it be established properly and let the appropriate action follow.

We will give any such firm the company's complete accounting records and every distribution statement we have received, not summaries prepared for the occasion, and both sides should see the same documents at the same time. I will accept the findings of any such firm, and I will say so publicly whichever way they fall.

One last observation. These accusations tend to surface when there is a record coming, or a song about to be premiered. I will not tell anyone what to make of that. Look at the timing yourself.

Our agreements set out how disputes are to be resolved, and we followed that route. We began the process the contract provides for. What followed instead was a series of complaints made elsewhere. I am not going to comment on where those complaints properly belong, because that is a matter for the institutions themselves and for the lawyers. What I will say is that we have cooperated fully with every authority that has asked anything of us, and we will continue to. We have nothing to hide, and we have never conducted ourselves as though we did.

There is already a date fixed. It was set through the proper process; both sides were notified, and every party in this dispute knows exactly when it is. I mention that only because anyone following this online would not know it from what has been said there. I intend to be there, as I was the last time. The dispute keeps being brought online instead, and I have deliberately stayed away from responding to every accusation, because I do not want to turn the internet into my courtroom. I would ask that we keep this where it belongs.

I will also say this plainly. Since this began, threats have been made against me and against people close to me. They have been documented, and they have been passed to the appropriate authorities. I am not going to describe them here, and I am not going to answer them. But a disagreement about a contract should never reach that point, and everyone watching this should think about how quickly it did.

I also will not use this moment to insult anyone. I could, but what would it solve? We have all said things in anger. What I will ask is that people stop hiding behind disputes to malign my name and dismiss the work I have put into this industry. I understand what fame, pressure and money can do to relationships. But I refuse to accept that the only way to defend yourself is to destroy someone else.

To my team, thank you. I know the sacrifices, and I know the people who have given years of their lives to building this company and creating opportunities for others. I am proud of you, and I remain grateful to everyone who has believed in the power of music and entertainment and what they can create.

To fellow music executives, our industry is growing, and we have to invest in education around contracts, music business investment, financial reporting, independent audits, and artists who genuinely understand what they are signing. Because when every disagreement becomes a social media war, everyone loses. The artist loses. The executive loses. The investor loses. The industry loses. And the young person watching learns the wrong lesson about what it takes to build a business in entertainment.

It is sad that what should have been a game-changing collaboration has become this, and I think it says something about how we work with each other in the Nigerian creative space. Too much I, not enough us, and not enough patience for the long game.

Let the lawyers do their work. Let the auditors examine the books. Let the contracts be read. Let the facts be established, and let the truth stand, even when it is inconvenient.

Let me end on something simpler than contracts and accounts. Before I was an executive, I was a fan. That has never changed. I still hear a record for the first time and know immediately that it is going to move people, and that feeling is the entire reason I do this rather than something easier or more profitable.

I did not build a career in this industry in order to take from artists. Everything I have is tied to artists doing well, and anyone who understands this business knows that a label that cheats its artists does not last, does not sign anyone again and does not survive its own reputation. It would be the stupidest thing I could do, quite apart from being wrong.

So I would ask one thing of the public. Wait. Look at the facts as they emerge rather than the loudest version of them, and let the people whose job it is to examine the books and the contracts do that job. When they have, whatever they find will be there for everyone to see, and I will live with it either way. I am asking for patience, not for the benefit of the doubt.

To everyone who has supported Dapper Group, believed in our work and trusted us with your careers, your businesses and your dreams, thank you.

Damilola "Dapper" Akinwunmi