[The Music Blog]: Staggering new revelations upend Kiss Daniel’s case with G-Worldwide

Kiss Daniel, Yeba

Because the media is both responsible for reporting recent events and shaping how the information is assimilated by the larger society, it becomes nearly impossible to extricate events from the sentiments that surrounded its reportage. In the part of the world, the media is almost entirely an agenda-setting tool for anyone who can manipulate information or better still afford it.This provides some context for the coverage on the on-going row between Kiss Daniel and his management G-Worldwide.

While Kiss Daniel continues to assure fans that his current battle with G-Worldwide is merely a distraction that won’t affect a lot of things, new information in the media indicates Kiss Daniel may have left a lot of information out of the initial statement released through his lawyers about the state of his affairs while he was officially signed to G-Worldwide.

Earlier in the week, a press statement released by Kiss Daniel’s legal team insinuated (though not-matter-of-factly) that G-Worldwide paid Kiss Daniel N30,000 for many months during his initial career take-off, only scaling it up to N50,000 after the singer expressed his discontent. According to Kiss Daniel, the grounds for walking out on his contract was sealed by the label for refusing to give Kiss Daniel unrestricted access to G-Worldwide’s accounts. This lone fact seemed to be the major crux of Kiss Daniel’s attempt to dissolve contract, but the legal statement also hinted that G-Worldwide alienated Kiss Daniel from the rest of the industry, subjected the singer to abuse and seemingly treated the singer like a cash-cow to milk for all of his offerings.

The initial media reaction to this statement rallied support for Kiss Daniel, with complete with memes surfacing online to decry claims that G-Worldwide underpaid Kiss Daniel and stalled his career advancement to the larger industry. However, earlier today, G-Worldwide released a more detailed statement expatiating on the label’s relationship with Kiss Daniel, even before his career came into full swing. The label also touched on it’s position regarding features and industry support, debunking the claim that the singer had been blocked on multiple occasions from supporting his colleagues. The biggest revelations in the statement, was that Kiss Daniel was only earning N30,000 before he had any major successful material released under the label, but even at the time, the label had willingly scaled up his monthly allowance to N50,000. According to G-Worldwide, Kiss Daniel received a total sum accruing to nearly N120,000,000 some of which include performance royalties and funds dispensed to the singer for multiple personal loans, house rent with utilities and a mortgage.

For starters, these new developments have turned Kiss Daniel and G-Worldwide’s internal problems into a typical Nigerian artist vs label case, where both sides are pointing accusatory fingers at the other. But mostly it puts his initial victim position in a weird balance, that almost feels like the singer’s statement left out details that would have made a fairer case for his label’s widely-publicised legal action on his career. A particular instance cited by the label, recounts how Kiss had reportedly stood up 2Baba, after promising to be at Buckwyld and Breathless concert as one of the artists on the line-up. G-Worldwide’s statement lists this as one of the many instances where he falsely used label restrictions as a cover to avoid performing at events to support fellow entertainers either because there was not a lot of pay involved or for other reasons best known to the singer.

While we wait for a final court judgement on Kiss Daniel vs G-Worldwide’s civil suit, it is noteworthy that his request to look at G-Worldwide’s books remains tenable cause for the singer’s decision to prematurely walk out on his 7-year contract. But even that lone detail is debatable by G-Worldwide’s claim that his accountants were provided with the data they asked for via email correspondence. And to cap it all, none of this explains why he left out the details of other benefits he got from the label. In other climates, such amounts would have equated a label advance, which all artists signed to a label are entitled to, but are also expected to refund, by returning on the career investment.

This is still a developing story.

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