Who Owns “Gbagbe Oshi”, Davido Or General Pype?
In 2014, at weekly concert Industry Nite, on a cold Wednesday night at Spice Route Lounge, Victoria Island Lagos, the industry gathered as usual to celebrate one their most distinguished sons.
The weekly concert and networking event which is organized by El Carnaval, a company founded and owned by industry strong man and entrepreneur, Matthew Ohio, runs on a specific format; a star is chosen to be the highlight of the night, and then opening acts and friends come to perform for everyone on record.
General Pype was one of the supporting artistes on one of those nights. He stepped on stage, and performed a very rousing unreleased single. Featuring muscular beats and an Afrobeat insert, the dancehall act moved the crowd, and pushed everyone to the edge with the quality of the performance and composition.
But that song was never officially released. Pype who was once the toast of the Nigerian market, and had his song ‘Keeping it cool’ was featured in Season 6 of American TV series, The Shield, is currently not at the top of the industry.
That was the last we heard of ‘Gbagbe Oshi’ until it showed up in 2016, being performed by Sony Music new boy, Davido.
2016 has seen the HKN star sign up to Sony Music in January, but delayed in dropping new music until September. ‘Gbagbe Oshi’ which was released was met with polarized opinions. While many fans accepted the single as new material from their idol Davido, a growing amount of professional critcis and outspoken analysts were not enamored by the patois on the song.
According to popular opinion, Davido failed at working a patois angle for the single, and will be better off if he stuck to everything that is not patois.
But listening to the General Pype’s version will answer the questions on patois. Pype is a seasoned dancehall artiste who delivers his lyrics in patois. The song ‘Gbagbe Oshi’, was produced by Shizzi, who is a Davido collaborator.
Sources have revealed to Pulse that after the production by Shizzi, Davido and his team fell in love with the final version of the song, and paid over a million Naira to Pype to get the song off him. Pype took his money and handed the song over to Davido. To release the song, Davido recorded the entire thing in own voice, choosing to use General Pype’s lyrics and only adding some background vocals and adlibs to create the final work.
According to Naijaloaded.com
The gist is that Davido bought the song from veteran Nigerian dance hall artiste, General Pype. Story has it that “Gbagbe Oshi” was written and performed by General Pype two years ago during Industry Nite. The song was never officially released by General Pype.
Davido and his team connected with the dance hall artiste and bought the rights to the song. Buy price was put at about over N1 million. Same song was re-recorded by Davido with production input from Shizzi. “Gbagbe Oshi” has Davido attempting to speak in patois for a few seconds into the song.
This kind of news is not new when Davido’s artistry is put in perspective. We have heard him buy songs from other artistes in the past. “Gobe” and “Aye” are some of his hit songs bought from other artistes.
