Billy Ocean may be a highly-respected disc jockey and a radio presenter with many years experience but I am skeptical if he commands the same expertise, competence, discipline and composure to hold the office as the manager of any artiste.
I don’t give a hoot if he has a squabble with Kwasi Aboagye, and many listeners of Peace FM do not know if the two presenters on the same station have a problem, but Billy Ocean’s faux pas on radio last Saturday said volumes of his character.
Apparently, Sidney has been accused of plagiarism, pilfering or in the lay man terms, stealing a song and as the manager of the artiste, Billy was duly called upon for clarification on the issue and all he did was misfire, throw tantrums and cast unnecessary insinuations.
Every word that emanated from Billy was derogatory, maligning and rudimentary and fraught with mischief. I could hardly contain my consternation when Billy Ocean retorted that the host has been in GIJ so should know better, and that Kwasi Aboagye has spent years on radio and should know what kind of questions to ask. He went on the waffle that Kwasi do not know the meaning of compilation and went on to explain what compilation means. I was astounded and was about to explode on air until I decided to save my remarks for this space. What has going to GIJ and the meaning of compilation got to do with somebody stealing a song? Although I realized Kwasi’s emotions rising, he kept his composure and overlooked all the insinuations - otherwise it could have been a nasty confrontation between two presenters of the same station.
It is about time people realize that it takes more than just fame, popularity and radio presentation to manage an artiste. They way you talk, respond to questions, and reacts to issues define an artiste manager and I am sorry to say that Billy Ocean falls short of managerial status. Elsewhere, Billy Ocean could be fired as a manager for acting unprofessionally and bringing his name and the artiste name into disrepute.
Delay, manager of Daddy Lumba displayed much sarcasm on the same show months ago following Lumba’s abysmal performance at the MOGO show.
Delay and Billy Ocean’s repugnant attitudes bring to the fore the question of radio personalities acting as artistes managers. There’s nothing wrong for a radio personality to manage any artiste but management is a different ball game which requires learning and practice, otherwise you will blabber any how like Delay and Billy Ocean.
During the breakup of Nanamom, issues of songwriting and ownership of songs came up. Sidney went solo and when ‘Apuskele’ came out the issue of song ownership came up again because another artiste, Nana Debrah had the same song on the market. And when ‘Obiaa nye Obiaa’ dropped, two other artistes had the same song on the market. And now, we have ‘African money’ and ‘Ghana money’ and the issue of song ownership. I won’t pass judgment but if the history of Sidney and song ownership is anything to go by, then Sidney ought to sit up.
It is not a crime if you can’t write songs, but it is not morally right if you steal songs from others and steal their shine, their opportunity to also make some money and stardom. What happened to the saying, ‘One man no chop’?
