It’s been speculated for some time but now it’s confirmed, Ice Prince Zamani is no longer with Chocolate City.
In an interview with Dotun and Temi, hosts of the the Midday Oasis on 96.9 Cool FM, the rapper disclosed that his contract with the label expired two years ago, however due to his personal relationship with the label owners, he decided not to make it public up until now. Ice Prince has floated a new record label – Super Cool Cats – and he’s dropped Chocolate City from all press releases, music releases and on his social media pages. However, he also took the pains to stress that he’ll continue to conduct business with the label he joined in 2010.
Plot twist.
Still continue to conduct business? What business? Ice Prince was made vice president of Chocolate City Music in June last year but with the way he seems to have distanced himself from the company in recent months, he’s currently contending with Namadi Sambo for the position of the most absentee VP Nigeria has ever seen. But his tenure can’t come to an end so soon, surely it can’t.
Over the last few years, it’s been clear that Audu Maikori has a corporate group vision for Chocolate City. In an interview in 2014, he explained the evolution of the company –
Chocolate City is a group of companies, the label is just one part of the company. So I’m the group CEO, so we have a media company, we have a music label which is what most people know.
We also have a bank consultancy arm of it and we do events as well. It’s a 360 company that does quite a few things… Just starting up, we always wanted to have that structure.
You can watch the entire interview here.
That allows space at the top for M.I. Abaga to be the CEO of Chocolate City Music, Ice Prince his VP , while Audu is CEO of the group of companies. The organization seems to be replicating the corporate group approach for its music division as well. M.I.’s Loopy Records, and its artists, was absorbed into Chocolate City Music a few months ago and there are strong indications that the same could happen to Ice Prince and his Super Cool Cats (SCC).
The future of bigger labels in Nigeria such as Chocolate City could be in brokering deals such as these, where their established artists are encouraged to start smaller imprints under the label’s big umbrella rather than starting off alone. The advantage for the parent company is that they’re better able to retain talent for the long term, which is a problem we opined that Olamide’s YBNL contract model could help solve. Also, they continue to benefit from their investment in not only their artist but also in their artist’s artists as well. On the other hand, the advantage for the artist with the new imprint is leverage – he’s able to operate a small label but with the capacity of a bigger one. Depending on how the deal is structured, he could have access to the legal, marketing, A&R, promotions, distribution, royalty collection and indeed all departments of the parent company. That way, he’s able to hit the ground running and his imprint has a better chance of surviving Nigeria’s harsh music climate. We explored this model two weeks ago.
That could be the big announcement Ice Prince tweeted about earlier today. It could become Super Cool Cats/Chocolate City.
Big announcement from CCmusic and SCC on Monday !! Stay tuned
Big announcement from CCmusic and SCC on Monday !! Stay tuned
— Click Link on Bio (@Iceprincezamani) May 19, 2016
That said, if Ice Prince is really leaving or indeed has left Choc City, the rapper follows Kahli Abdu & VHS Safari and rapper Milli as recent departures from the label. No disrespect to those other guys but Ice Prince is undoubtedly the biggest to leave the fold, having risen to become one of the most popular artists on the continent in recent years.
While with the label, Ice Prince released two solo albums Everybody loves Ice Prince (2011) and Fire of Zamani (2013) and an EP Trash Can (2015). He was also heavily featured on albums by his former label mates as well as the compilation album The Indestructible Choc Boi (2015).
He is set to release his third studio album titled Jos to the World soon and is also said to be working on getting artists and producers signed to his new label home.