The Nigerian music industry is a place where friendships and Beefs exist on the same plane. Artists in the industry are not shy to speak their mind against who they don’t like.
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Beefs are the result of the human ego and competitive natures. There will always be bad blood between two or more music artists in the Nigerian music industry, whether it’s a war for supremacy or superiority over wealth and riches, quality of music, or other issues.
Some of these ‘beefs’ always shake the whole industry and even cause fans to go against each other both on the internet and outside of it. That’s how serious ‘beefs’ can go in the Nigerian music Industry.
We are taking a look into some of the iconic and interesting beefs that rocked the Nigerian Music industry in the past decade;
Reminisce vs Vector
Reminisce and Vector are on cool terms now but back in the days, they had a disagreement both Lyrically and in Personality, resulting in diss tracks from both camps.
In January 2012, Reminisce released two tracks titled IF ONLY and 2much off his failed debut album “Books of Rap Stories”. He opened ‘2much’ with the lyrics,
“Reminisce in the building, O Ta Lenu (It’s spicy), Legendury beat”.
In February 2012, Sauce Kid who would be later known as Sinzu featured Vector in a track titled kitchen street, it was produced by Legendury beat too.
Vector used the opportunity to throw some jabs at Reminisce who in return went to Sossick’s studio at Isolo, and did a one minute reply to him.
Vector initially didn’t reply to him, he only threw sublimes at Reminisce via the microblogging site Twitter.
In June 2012, AQ featured Vector on a track called “Distraction“, a track which was motivated by Don Jazzy interview with Hip Hop World Magazine where he (Don Jazzy) urged Rappers to sing in other to appeal to a larger audience. Vector dedicated his whole 16 bars into dissing Reminisce
Though a few years back, they both settled their differences, and Reminisce was on the Remix of “King Kong” and likewise Vector featured on the Baba Hafusa Album. It is all good with these two artists.
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Tiwa Savage Vs Yemi Alade
This could probably pass for the biggest female beef the Nigerian music industry has ever experienced.
Both Yemi Alade and Tiwa have been slotting it out for the position of the number one female musician in the nation and the continent in general.
Yemi Alade tagged herself as “Mama Africa” while Tiwa refers to herself as “Number 1 African Badgal” which has further fueled their rivalry and their battle for supremacy.
The feud between them started after Yemi Alade via her Twitter account in 2018 fired bullets at an anonymous person she claimed was photoshopping her buttocks to fool her fans on social media.
She tweeted,
“Stop increasing your yansh in your pictures. You know you are straight like ‘I’. Embrace your real self! Ahh ahh. Deceiving fans up and dan.”
Seeing her post, Tiwa reacted by posting some of her pictures showing her shapes and curves to downplay Yemi Alade’s claims, this resulted in an exchange of words between the two songstresses’ fans.
Tiwa further took to her Instagram Stories to blow hot as she wrote, “Don’t start a war you cannot finish. Trust me I’m not the one. I’m quiet but don’t f**k with me.”
The two reconciled their differences when Tiwa Savage headlined the 2019 Flytime Music Festival and brought Yemi Alade to perform with her on stage.
However, to date, fans of the two still clash on Twitter with Yemi Alade’s fans accusing Tiwa of blocking them whenever they post something about Yemi.
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Olamide vs. Don Jazzy
The epic rivalry between the biggest label giants in the industry, YBNL and Mavin Records is one of the biggest beefs to happen in the Nigerian music industry and was birthed out of the love they had for their various artists.
The beef began when Mavin Records artiste, Reekado Banks, was announced the winner of the 2016 Headies next rated award.
For some reason, this didn’t go down well with YBNL boss, Olamide.
When Olamide went on stage the moment Adekunle Gold won an award, he vented his frustrations as he claimed Lil Kesh was most deserving of the award and not any other person.
In his words,
“Adekunle, let’s be honest, this award belongs to Lil Kesh because Lil Kesh is our next rated.”
Later, Don Jazzy also went up the stage and made his own comments referring directly to Olamide,
” Erm…Egbon Olamide, erm….if you want the car, come and collect it.”
This speech prompted Olamide to declare war on Don Jazzy on Twitter.
Apart from heralding 2016 Nigerian celebrity fights, the fight was remarkable for obvious reasons. This includes the fact that former President Olusegun Obasanjo also tweeted about the matter.
The beef also gave rise to the #LEAVETRASHFORLAWMA, a hashtag that trended that year.
Billionaire business magnate, Dangote, had to intervene in the matter.
The two have since reconciled their differences with Olamide earlier in 2020 proclaiming Mo’hits records, a label which Don Jazzy headed as the best thing to happen to Nigerian Music Industry.
P-Square Family Feud
One of Nigeria’s biggest music exports, Peter and Paul Okoye aka PSquare went from being an almost unbeatable music group to being solo artists.
The drama started when Peter, who is the most outspoken of the duo, called out his elder brother and manager Jude, on Twitter over alleged poor managerial skills, especially in the last four years.
After a series of tweets and altercations, Peter fired Jude on Twitter. However, this decision didn’t go down too well with Paul who had obviously taken sides with Jude and this led to the temporary breakup of the duo.
Peter took on a new identity as MR. P and similarly, Paul, who by now preferred to be called ‘Rudeboy’. The two are said to have reconciled their differences.
However, their elder brother Jude made it known in an interview that there is no hope of P-square ever reconciling.
Davido VS Wizkid
Arguably the most popular beef in the history of Nigerian music. Wizkid and Davido have been at loggerheads since they both established themselves as the biggest music exports of Nigerian music some years back.
Even their fans have not been left out in their beefs as they always like to create arguments to establish who is superior between the two.
One of the issue they had in the past is when Davido expressed his anxiety on social network as the world-famous footballer, Cristiano Ronaldo followed him on Instagram network app, Wizkid on the other hand hung out with ace American rapper “Future’ in an event thereby tweeted a direct attack on Davido saying ‘The ‘Future’ you see is better than the ‘Footballer (Ronaldo) you don’t see’ making a direct swipe at Davido for celebrating Ronaldo’s IG follow despite not seen him yet.
Davido however replied him with an epic clap back tweeting that ‘The footballer you don’t see is better than the Drake that never came closer’ making reference to the absence of Drake in Wizkid Come closer music Video.
Although there have been moves to always bury the hatchet by the two superstars like they did when both artists performed at each other’s concert in Lagos in December of 2017, the beef still finds away to resurrect.
The two have since resolved their problems but the comparisons still exist big time and their fans are still at loggerheads.
M.I Abaga and Vector
This is one of the most interesting beefs to happen to the Nigerian music industry.
In 2019, M.I and Vector set the Nigerian rap scene on fire as they went at each other in with a series of diss tracks which led to social media arguments on who the better rapper is.
The M.I vs Vector beef dates back to 2018 when Vector responded to M.I Abaga on Cool FM’s ‘Midday Oasis.’ He thought M.I was wrong for recording ‘You Rappers Should Fix Up Your Lives.’ Before then, they’d appeared on songs together but never featured each other.
Both rappers are ambassadors for two competing brands that have sponsored rap cyphers which both rappers have used as a platform to throw jabs at each other.
On January 10, 2019, M.I made his biggest claim yet to the rap throne. He orchestrated the highly pleasing and enjoyable Martell Cypher and called on his 100 Crowns brethren, AQ and Loose Kaynon to send messages to Vector. Loose Kaynon was the first. He rapped, “Washed up rappers turned pop want to son Hip-Hop artists…”
This led to subsequent diss tracks from the two with the main ones being Viper and Judas The Rat.
In 2020, Mayorkun released an extended playlist that features three remixes of his smash hit-song, Geng and in the Nigerian version, M.I Abaga and Vector both featured on the track.
The two artists were featured on a Henessey Docu-seres which explored hip-hop in Nigeria. During the last episode, two sat down to hash out their issues and what led to their fight. They made and Vector featured M.I in a song, “Crown of Clay” he released in 2021.
DJ Cuppy vs Zlatan Ibile
This was was one of the first Nigerian Music Industry beefs of 2021.
DJ Cuppy via her social media page in 2021 informed her fans that Zlatan had blocked her on WhatsApp and Instagram.
She tweeted,
“10 months later and I sometimes still wonder why Zlatan Ibile blocked me on WhatsApp and Instagram without ever saying why; we were actually friends and “Gelato” was a hit!”
The Zanku singer did not respond to her viral tweet till he was interviewed on a show, The Switch, where he denied knowing the disc Jockey.
Barely 24 hours after denying the disc jockey, Afeare Isreal, one of the aides of popular singer, Davido, revealed why the singer is angry with DJ Cuppy.
He claimed on his Instagram page,
“Kudos to someone like Zlatan, who took a bold step by flushing a full fake friend like Cuppy who was just using his head all in the name of ‘my papa na Otedola’. Zlatan did a hit collabo with her, ordinary one kobo, he no see.
“She also took Zlatan to Abuja for her fundraising where she made billions of naira and didn’t even remember Zee for one kobo until tomorrow. No accommodation, no feeding. Zlatan had to even spend his own personal money at Transcorp Hilton to carter for everyone including me. Dis na 2021 abeg.”
DJ Cuppy took to her social media page to announce that she was suing Israel for slander and stated that she was owing Zlatan according to her records.
After Isreal apologized for what he said, she withdrew the lawsuit but her relationship with Zlatan has still not been repaired.
Burna Boy vs Davido
The source of Burna Boy and Davido’s beef isn’t clear but the two at some point reportedly were involved in a brawl in a club.
In 2020, Davido had unveiled he was working on an album titled, A Better Time, which was meant to be released in July 2020.
Davido also tweeted an edited photo of him and fellow Nigerian singer, Wizkid, captioned
“The 2 greatest of all time! No cap”
Burna Boy took to snapchat with the message,
“July will be very funny, and I shall laugh accordingly” and fans interpreted it that he was ridiculing Davido’s new album.
Burna Boy also questioned Davido’s success by claiming that he owes his achievements to his billionaire father. The message still did not mention Davido by name:
“you cannot play football, everybody knows you cannot play football and you are an embarrassment to the team. But your daddy bought the football team”.
After a while of being absent on social media, Davido released a track titled “Fem” which was interpreted to be a diss song at Burna.
In his track ‘FEM’, which is Yoruba slang for ‘shut up’, Davido addresses Burna Boy directly in the line, “Tell Odogwu say we like to party just call me…” – ‘Odogwu’ and ‘Like to Party’ are both names of a Burna Boy song.
After Davido announced the new release date of his album, Burna Boy took to his Twitter and wrote, “Floppy disk.” A jab many online users speculated was meant for Davido.
Also, fans believed that Burna Boy’s song ‘Way Too Big’ from his August 2020 album ‘Twice as Tall’ was directed at Davido with the lyrics, “I’m way too big to be f***ing with you”.
After the back and forth on social media and in the recording booth, the two stars were reported to have fought at a club in Ghana.