The Celebration Of Song “Thieves”, Kuami Eugene, Guru and Mr Drew

The idea of taking someone’s product and passing it off as your own is both despicable and insulting but it can be found in all aspect of life with the music industry not immune to this cancer.

Lots of young up and coming artists have suffered and continue to suffer from this disease especially at the hands of established acts with Guru of “Boys Abr3” and “Lapaz Toyota” fame rumoured to be the worse. K9 manager of Nautica accused Guru of stealing his act’s song with Osagy Osagy tarring him with a similar blush. Tee Phlow at the early stages of his career did accuse Guru of stealing his concept for a song.

Recently, the title of top “song thief” has been passed on to Kuami Eugene and he has embodied it wholly. Three of his biggest hits “Angela”, “Confusion” and “Wish Me Well” have all been placed in the basket of songs he stole from other artists. He does deny all the allegations and have expressed taking inspiration from other artists but has never stolen a song from another artist.

Mr Drew is the latest musician on the song thief charts and he is climbing up the charts quickly. The former MTN Hitmaker contestant has enjoyed the limelight this year for both positive and negative news. His song “Dw3” featuring Sarkodie was a hit with many Ghanaians enjoying the song but Kurl Songs and Rasteo Gh claims the song was stolen from them. Prior to this, Mr Drew’s music has not enjoyed much success in the music industry therefore he capitalised on it to release another hit, “Eat” featuring dancehall artist Stonebwoy.

The song was removed from YouTube after Nigerian actor and musician Rotimi filed a copyright infringement case against it. Mr Drew apologised and admitted “Eat” was a cover of Rotimi’s “Love Riddim”. His management team released a statement claiming they are in contact with Rotimi to resolve the issue.

Although the song thieves have and continue to benefit at the expense of the owners, this behaviour and cancer needs to be removed from the entertainment industry. The media needs to continue their shaming of artists that continue to steal and maybe refuse to support music that are blatantly stolen from other acts.