6th February: the Furore between Blackface Vs Tuface ‎—Simon Utsu

0
200
Reading Time: 3 minutes

Simon Utsu|3 February 2017

I read Blackface's open attack on his cousin and former business partner, 2face a couple of days ago and one thing was obvious, he has still not forgiven Tuface.‎ In the aftermath of that outburst, lots of folks called him a frustrated hater and all sorts of unprintable names; I beg to differ. Let me first remind forgetful Nigerians about their history and the cause of the 'beef'.

The founding members of the Plantashun boiz group were Blackface and Faze. Both were friends who grew up and met in Festac, Lagos. Tuface relocated to Lagos from Jos were he was a barber and reunited with his cousin Blackface. Tuface then indicated interest in joining their music group, Blackface had no issues with that but Faze had his reservations. Eventually, Blackface prevailed on Faze and Tuface joined the group. They had a successful first album. And then whilst they were preparing for the release of their 2nd album, Tuface did the unthinkable and backstabbed his group mates by not only abandoning their O'Jez record label for Kennis Music but also stealing a sizeable amount of their material and using in his debut project with Kennis viz his "Face 2 Face" album.

Well, the different directions their various careers went is now a subject for the history books. ‎Also, like we all know, Tuface is the only one amongst the trio that is still relevant in the Nigerian music industry today. Many may say Blackface is jealous about 2Face's success, reason why he keeps taking jibes at him but I'll say Blackface has a very good reason to do so. Some people may also say 2face was bad to turn his back on Blackface after his cousin facilitated his entry into the group, others might add that he shouldn't have walked out of the group the way he did. For the fact that I want to make a vaild argument, I'll leave out the two emotional reasons above.

Even if 2face doesn't owe Blackface anything for the two reasons above, he owes him a lot for intellectual property theft! Yes, Tuface cheated his mates when he stole the material they had worked on together and ran away with it and used for his debut Kennis album which turned out to be classic. Outside Nigeria, Tuface would have paid millions of dollars in court or out of court settlements to the duo but alas, the Nigerian legal system/entertainment industry isn't mature enough to accomodate good entertainment lawyers. The description of the 5-star music lawyer by Harrysong and his new manager surmises it all- "we got to Lion building(police HQ) to see a haggard man in a cheap suit who told us he was 5-star music's lawyer".

Some people even claim Blackface has no talent that's why he's where he is today but it'll shock them to know he wrote nearly 80% of their songs during the Plantashun Boiz days. 2face kept stealing his(Blackface) work to the extent that in his last album(Ascension) released in 2014, Blackface still claimed a chunk of the lyrics in "Let somebody love you" featuring Bridget Kelly was lifted from some of the lines he wrote during their Plantashun Boiz days without proper credit being given to him or any royalty being paid by 2face. If Blackface(or faze) can hire a good entertainment lawyer, a very valid case of intellectual property theft will be established against 2face. 2baba will then pay heavy amounts of cash or be disgraced by either being thrown into jail OR have a commensurate amount of his assets confisticated. For those who still insist Blackface has no case, ask yourselves why male celebrities abroad settle their spouses heavily during divorce cases or Mark Zuckerberg had to settle(heavily) his former Harvard colleagues who he started Facebook together with but hijacked the idea when some had lost interest or couldn't see the bigger picture he was seeing. He paid some in tens of millions of US Dollars whilst some who didn't even put in much got billions in severances and settlements.

Blackface has a case, he just needs a good lawyer that's all!

Simon Utsu
Is a Social Commentator