Shallipopi’s feud with former label Dapper Music has taken a sharper turn: the Afrobeats star now accuses boss Damilola Akinwunmi of forging his signature on a distribution deal and secretly selling his catalogue to a foreign company without his consent.
In a pointed statement posted to his X account on Saturday, the “Laho” hitmaker, born Crown Uzama, alleged that his relationship with Dapper Music was never meant to extend beyond artist management.
According to Shallipopi, the 2023 agreement he signed covered management services only, yet Akinwunmi allegedly altered the terms and presented it as a ten-year distribution contract, despite the singer already having independent distribution through DistroKid at the time.
The allegations escalate further from there. Shallipopi claims that Akinwunmi went on to forge his signature a second time, this time to finalize a deal with international label Virgin Music Group, and pocketed the proceeds without his knowledge.
In the singer’s telling, he was left in the dark while Akinwunmi allegedly collected payment for rights to his own catalogue and urged him to simply “work harder” for future rewards.
Shallipopi framed the alleged deception in blunt terms, insisting he may come from humble beginnings but is nobody’s fool, and accusing Akinwunmi of pocketing money from the Virgin Music Group deal while telling him his real payday was still ahead.
He has now vowed to pursue the matter through Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, calling on the anti-graft agency, government officials, and the media across Africa to treat the allegations with urgency.
Saturday’s forgery claims did not emerge in isolation. They follow a separate round of allegations the singer made just a day earlier, in which he accused Dapper Music of withholding royalty income from 46 of his songs, including proceeds from his hit single “E Don Cast,” and of failing to properly account for money generated when his catalogue was reportedly moved to Virgin Music.
In those posts, Shallipopi suggested he was not the only artist affected, alleging that Dapper Music had handled other acts’ catalogues in similarly opaque fashion.
The tension between the two parties is not new. Shallipopi first announced he was severing ties with Dapper Music in December 2024, at the time citing a lack of transparency and accusing the label of trying to lock him into what he described as a predatory long-term contract.
A fellow signee, Moshood Abdulmuiz, known as Muyeez, made parallel allegations of mismanagement against the label around the same period. Dapper Music responded then by rejecting the claims as baseless and coordinated, maintaining that its contracts were legally sound and that any disputes belonged in court rather than on social media.
As of Saturday, Dapper Music had not issued a public response to the forgery and unauthorized-sale allegations.
Given the label’s past posture of denying wrongdoing and pointing disputes toward the courts, observers expect a similarly firm rebuttal, though the specificity of Shallipopi’s latest claims alleging outright forgery of legal documents rather than simply poor communication over royalties raises the stakes considerably.
Should the singer follow through on his threat to formally petition the EFCC, the case could mark one of the most closely watched artist-label disputes in Nigeria’s music industry in recent years, adding to a string of public complaints from artists over catalogue ownership, royalty transparency, and the terms under which independent Nigerian talent signs away rights to major international distributors.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
Shallipopi alleges that Dapper Music’s Damilola Akinwunmi forged his signature twice: once to trap him in a 10-year distribution deal, and again to sell his catalogue to Virgin Music Group without his knowledge, then pocketed the proceeds while telling him to keep working for a payday that never came.
He’s now threatening to take the matter to the EFCC. These are serious, unverified accusations from one side of a dispute that’s been simmering since 2024; Dapper Music hasn’t responded yet, and the real story will hinge on what the paperwork and any investigation actually show.
