‘Attention’ is one essential element every entertainer needs. In the world of show business, attention is needed to be able to sell any product and the hallmark of good entertainers is their ability to fixate attention to their product or themselves in order to thrive in the business.

Show business is also fraught with competition; artists are competing to top the charts, to outsell each other, to bag lucrative deals and to annex prestigious awards. Movies are always competing at the Box Office and actors are competing to be the best paid and to garner the best awards. It’s a competitive world!

Shatta Wale news vrs Stonebwoy news

Ghanaian dancehall super star, Shatta Wale, is a news maker; he has the knack to generate attention, be it positive or negative, and this authoritative portal www.entertainmentgh.com, has also noted in the last 2 years, how he’s been able to extinguish or simmer down major headline –making news about his fellow dancehall contemporary, Stonebwoy.

Anytime Stonebwoy chalks up some feat that deserves to generate some long-standing conversation, Shatta Wale is able to engineer some activity that seems to snuff out any further talk of Stonebwoy.

Check out these two major observations out of a couple;

Evidence A

On June 28, 2015, Stonebwoy became the second Ghanaian artist and the first dancehall act to pick the BET ‘Best International Act’ category at the BET Awards. He was able to overcome tense competition from stalwarts like AKA (South Africa), Fally Ipupa (DR Congo), Sauti Sol (Kenya), The Soil (South Africa), Wizkid (Nigeria), Yemi Alade (Nigeria) and fellow Ghanaian, Sarkodie.

That was a grand feat which generated the headlines and was going to be talked about on all entertainment platforms and among showbiz-loving people for a longtime, but some other person had other plans.

On July 1, 2015, when Stonebwoy and BET were making the rounds, with the talk of supremacy between the two coming to the fore, Shatta Wale unleashed a salvo!

“Am selling da VGMA one all 3 for 2 cedis,” he tweeted.

That tweet had 91likes within minutes and 141 Retweets and eventually doused every talk of Stonebwoy and whatever prestigious award he had.

Buoyed by his then vocal and enterprising Manager, Bulldog, the sale of his VGMA prizes for 2Ghc took center-stage and ‘killed’ any talk relating to Stonebwoy.

Evidence B

In September 2016 , the Coke Studio wave hit Ghana and a couple of artists got the opportunity to feature including Stonebwoy. What got music lovers and critics overly-excited was news of Stonebwoy’s meeting multiple ward-winning international act, Trey Songz and a collaborative joint that is yet-to-be-released.

Within days of that news making the headlines, Shattta Wale tilted the chatter, to his favour!

His revelation of how much he got from the Coke Studio and how much the other Ghanaian acts took for their involvement in the venture shrouded any further Stonebwoy-Trey Songz talk.

The ‘plan’ from the Shatta’s camp worked, to the extent that, even Stonebwoy got caught up in it, by taking time to respond to Shatta’s claim instead of concentrating on pushing the Trey Songz agenda.

Shatta’s Smartness OR Stonebwoy’s Slackness?

The ability of Shatta Wale to always quell the incessant commentary on any gargantuan Stonebwoy achievement can be interpreted as insensitive or smartness. What is insensitive about he making his own news and ensuring that, it gets talked about?

He didn’t ask any radio or TV host to shun the news of Stonebwoy and do his and he never begged any producer to make his news the topic of the day. To engineer the timing of his news to quench that of his competitor(s) – maybe, that is sheer smartness.

Stonebwoy is doing extremely well with his craft. He has a stronghold locally, a presence internationally and a bright future sonically. However, his ability to make the news and not be able to ensure that such ground-breaking news makes the rounds for a longtime is sheer slackness. He and his team but step up, not put the news out there and just go to sleep.

He is supposed to generate buzz, generate some serious talk about his album, his personality to have any chance of catching the eyes of the experts at the Grammys, yet, the only serious buzz we have now is Shatta Wale and his $1million cedis – and for all we know, nobody at the Grammys has even heard that name before – arguably!