One of the battles facing almost every upcoming artiste is to keep their brands away from the top artistes who can steal them without getting scratched from anyone.
As artistes keep marking their success with funny titles they give their songs, Imo State based artiste cum producer, Reflex Soundz joined the likes of Inyanya (Kukere), KCee (Limpopo), Terry G (Akpako) and Davido (Skelewu), to title his track Shimbolobo.
Shimbolobo which is one of the 7 official singles out of his producer’s mixtape titled ‘The Alternative’, was released on June 8, 2013 and ahead of the nationwide promotion he had been embarking on to see that his own brand spreads round like others, Reflex would be facing tough competition from singer Mbryo who has also chosen to name his track Shimbolombo.
Mbryo who is signed to Rugged Records, a label owned by Ruggedman would be considered a bigger than Reflex who was left scrambling for help after a ‘screen grab’ of Mbryo’s Blackberry Messanger profile on September 20, 2013 reads ‘Shimbolobo’ by TSO (Produced by DelB) dropping soon. (TSO means The Special One).
Reflex and Mbryo met in August at Deejay Saquo’s Star Nite in Owerri, and event Mbryo and his boss Ruggedman performed as guest artistes. Reflex was also on stage alongside the duo to perform the dancehall track ‘Push’ which he produced for Ruggedman.
The questions are, why Shimbolobo? Why didn’t Mbryo choose Skelewu, Limpop or Kukere?
Mbryo had previously been on song title controversy when he saw two artistes, Bibz Onpoint and Lyrikul Assassin, released ‘Ragabomi’ after he released his version went online in May 27, 2013.
This time, he has placed Reflex on the receiving end by choosing to use Shimbolobo as the title of his track.
According to Reflex, “There are a millions of songs probably with titles like; My Love or your love, etc. but I am sure it really out of place to see too many songs with titles like Limpopo, Kukere, skelewu or shimbolobo”
Comments by Reflex are pointing at the fact that Mbryo stole his title and with (Mbryo) being the bigger artiste, he (Reflex) feels it is a kind of intimidation on smaller artistes or the bigger artiste lacks the creativity to come up with his own concept.
Mbryo’s version of the song was released October 9, 2013 and it will be for the music lovers around the country to compare who did better.
So far, there has been no comment from Mbryo who has not responded to questions put forward to him by our correspondent and so far Reflex has not said anything about taking a legal action in the issue.
If he does, it will mark a breakthrough for upcoming artistes around the country who have suffered the same thing, but if he decides to let the sleeping dog lie, it means another artiste somewhere would be warming uo as the next victim of this unfair act.
