Nigerian Music Nigeria – Another Terry G Issue With Beats

Source: Simisola, Naijarules, Jan 08, 2010

An article, published in one of the media some weeks ago, had “Terry G rips off yet another artiste” as its title. This immediately suggests that one of the reigning Nigerian music artistes – Terry G, has taken to stealing -- stealing from fellow artistes!

The questions that immediately come to the mind of the readers are – Terry G, a thief? , why? Could this be the truth? Who are his victims? The article reported that an artiste, who is just one of Terry G’s victims, Ditty blaq, recently announced his disgust at Terry G for using a beat he sold to him for N150, 000:00. He expressed more disgust that Terry G showed no remorse, made no refunds and failed totally to correct the wrong.

That is the case against Terry G. Is he guilty? Of course, all we have before us are mere accusations, the substance of which has not been determined. It is however worthy of note that Terry G made a somewhat confession. The beat in question is that used for Terry G’s song, street madness. In the song, interestingly, Terry G admits guilt, as he says, “the person weh geti dis beat eh, dem dey for outside eh”. That’s a whole lot of confidence, one might say.

We have no further responses from Terry G on these accusations and as such, we are inadequately armed with relevant facts to be able to take any conclusive stands on who is right and who is not. This being that it is not uncommon for artistes to make untrue statements in their songs; fancy statements delivered with swagger is what counts and not the truth of those statements. Also, Terry G may think and say he is guilty and be wrong about it – for lack of information. However, we are in a position to make some valid deductions and provide useful opinion. The information at our disposal and knowledge of the Nigerian music industry practices and customs will be placed against the provisions of the law to do this but in so doing, a basic assumption would have to be made, – that the accusations are true.

It is necessary to mention at this point that the aim of this article is not to determine the guilt of Terry G but rather to examine the issues that the accusations bring to the fore and to suggest methods which industry practitioners may take under the law to protect themselves. Issues the accusations bother on include the following:

Artiste and music producer transactions in Nigeria (customs)
Legal character of a beat
Beat ownership and transfer
Post-transfer rights, limitations and liabilities
Remedies

It is common practice among the younger Nigerian pop musicians, generally referred to as the Nigerian hip-hop artistes, the category an artiste like Terry G falls into, to simply walk up to a music producer or beat maker, the latter being a more accurate description for most instances, and buy a beat. Simply put in a dramatic form, artiste says, “Mr. Producer, I wan buy beat. Which ones dey ground?” This he says, absolutely unaware of the nature of the legal transaction he just proposed. Mr. Producer makes a couple of beats available for listening.

The artiste and often times his friends too do some listening and the preferred beats are chosen and paid for. Mr. Producer then makes the beats available in stereo and multi-track formats. Then the artiste says to himself, “I have just bought some beats, I am on my way to becoming a star.”

Nigerian Music Nigeria Terry G