To borrow Sound Sultan’s famous jungle logic, when the bush meat finally catches its hunter, it may not have been the first hunter to try to take its life, but it is the one that was caught so the hunter must pay for the sins of ALL his colleagues. The bush meat sees all hunters as one contiguous block and transfers aggression from all its previous experiences into that one encounter. That’s what seems to be happening with Emma Nyra and a male producer OD Beats.
This week, the former Triple MG singer was accused by a producer Samson Ohda known as OD Beats of stealing his beat for her latest single ‘Work hard’ the lead song off her debut EP Love vs Money Vol. 1.
According to him –
On June 29th Emma Nyra was in the studio with Samson Ohda aka OD Beats when he creatively produced and composed the reggae/afropop influenced beat for ‘Work Hard’ off her released EP. After OD beats had been contracted (Verbally/Text Messages) to produce her EP, shortly after started having difficulty with payment from her camp.
Subsequently after trying to make a deposit for OD to send over some tracks, they started making up excuses which led to her stealing the intellectual property in a sordid attempt to recreate an idea she did not pay for and sell it off as having produced by another Houston based producer Giggz in a show of spite.
In calling out the singer, the producer was trying to point out the struggles that he and his colleagues faced in working with artists. Mind you, OD Beats didn’t make an allusion to the singer’s gender but rather than using her platform to explain her side of the story, Emma Nyra pulled the misogyny card to curry sympathy.
I have been patient with those who have been attacking me for years. Is it because I am a woman? Do you think I am weak and do not have a voice? I have my own self-funded company
Here we go..
I write and compose MY OWN music with my team way before I enter the studio as well as with any writer I may work with. I ALWAYS conduct business honestly with ALL of my staff members and anyone who renders me a service. You should know by now that I am not weak. You can not prey on me just because I am a woman. This is the #YearOfTheWOMAN. I speak for all women when I say that we should no longer take any form of defamation sitting down.
Any one, and any company, trying to defame me henceforth will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. You will see the power of God and His love work through me this year and forevermore. This is the first and last time I am addressing anything like this ever again. Now, back to the music!
There are reports that Emma replaced OD Beats with Giggz because OD didn’t deliver on time. Emma had the opportunity to address those reports and the producer’s specific accusation herself, but instead she took the low road and started talking about women’s rights. That’s the equivalent of a black person arguing with a white person in public about absolutely nothing pertaining to race. And after the white person has said their peace, everyone in the public awaits a response from the black person but they pull out an old and worn-out race card from their back pocket and place it on the table. Check up! There’s no response to a race or misogyny card and the player knows that. You can’t send someone to general market or to go and to pick 3 after that. Meanwhile, the game isn’t actually over, you simply deflected attention but the crux of the matter is – did you steal the beat or not?
Let’s be clear, misogyny exists in entertainment and culture as it does in every facet of Nigerian life or indeed life, period. This week, arguably the most powerful man in American media Roger Ailes was forced to resign from Fox News the company he founded after being accused of misogyny’s elder brother – sexual harassment and exploitation. The week before, Senator Dino Melaye made a number of repugnant, deeply sexist comments about Senator Remi Tinubu but somehow, most people have chosen to see the funny side of things.
Roger Ailes and Sen. Dino Melaye
Earlier in the year, Linda Ikeji too was the victim of sexist insults, the blogger however reported that she was able to get the police to make Wizkid issue a private apology to her. Linda was right in using the law to her advantage but even then, she strategically hid under the convenient umbrella that being pro-feminist provides female aggressors. Again, let’s be clear, there’s no place for the kind of disgusting insults Wizkid poured on Linda and his behaviour is inexcusable but LIB was the instigator in their latest round of hostilities, after publishing damaging reports about his personal life that were unproven.
At her former label, Emma Nyra was reportedly the victim of abuse herself – verbal and physical. I do not know whether the allegations against Ubi Franklin are true or whether Emma indeed reported the matter – she has always been coy about it – but I do know that even though the number of women and men are equal in the general population, women are the minority in Nigerian entertainment. Let’s do a random women inequality spot check. Only Tiwa Savage and Beyonce have had top 10 records on PlayData in the last few weeks, while at the Africa Music Fest last night, Tiwa was the only female headliner. Now, there are a number of reasons for this imbalance which I won’t go into here, but it’s obvious that at the highest level of Nigerian entertainment, women are grossly underrepresented.
Headliners for the One Africa Music Fest, New York
I’m not a woman, I exist as a majority in most sections of my community – I belong to a major tribe, I’m male, I’m a heterosexual, so I admit that I can never truly understand the struggle of a minority group. That’s why I am always empathetic to struggle when I hear it being expressed by the oppressed so I can understand where it’s coming from and play my own tiny part to stand up to it, but not this time. I am also a professional, if there is a professional or legal conversation to be had, let’s have it first then discuss other things later. Besides, just like women, we discussed last week that producers too are historically oppressed by everyone else, especially singers, in the music value chain. Let’s not turn this thing into a case of who cries wolf louder.
Misogyny in Nigerian entertainment and culture is an issue, but it is not always the issue. In transferring aggression from all the times in her career when she was wronged and diverting attention when she in turn appears to be in the wrong, Emma Nyra isn’t helping the cause of pro-feminists by trivializing what is a very significant problem in Nigeria today.
(By the way, rest in peace to Emma Nyra’s grand mom who passed away this month)