Controversy over Better song: Slessor claims Gwamba copied his lyrics

A rising hip-hop artist Slessor Munthali has accused award winning artist Gwamba of reproducing a verse of his Puputa Misonzi song to fuse it in hit song, Better.

Puputa Misonzi was released on January 1 2016 whereas Better -which is getting more famous -was released at the end of the same month when Gwamba turned into a gospel artist.

Gwamba and Slessor have taken the centre stage of the industry with a war of words.
The two have been throwing jabs at each other on social media.

And Slessor accuses Lilongwe-based rapper Gwamba of copying “the first lines of the first verse in Puputa Misozi.”

He claimed Gwamba has translated his lyrics in Chichewa , accusing him of copyright infringement.

Gwamba dismissed the accusation as outrageous, saying Slessor is seeking public attention.

“Right now the only way that guy [Slessor] can make it to the newspaper is when there is a story that has my name on it. I’m tired of making rappers relevant. That’s all I’m going to say on this issue. Otherwise, there is a difference between a phrase and a sentence.

“If someone says ‘Mkazi umakhala kuti’ then another says ‘Mkazi umakhala kuti’ then it means they have stolen a song from each other? Or else, Cardwell Bobby once said in his song ‘I know you wonder why’ and in Better I said ‘Ndikudziwa pena umadabwa’ then it means I stole my song from Bobby?

“People love the song, and I thank God for that. We all need to live with that. But it’s good to be surprised sometimes,” said Gwamba.

The two singers  have had bad relationship of late.

The Mzuzu-bred Slessor, now based in Blantyre,  said the feud was created by Gwmaba when hes started “throwing subliminal lines in one of his songs that is affiliated with my label HB Records.”

“He said ‘Inu you work hard, ine I work harder, inu mukamawekha hard ine ndima spenda’ when the “I work hard” is HB’s moto. Then he went on to further take shots at Tanaposi [my label mate] by saying ‘John Chilembwe anatha fasho,” claimed Slessor.

Gwamba said those claims are jabs of a dying horse as the ‘I work hard’ motto is a DJ Khalid motto and no Malawian rapper or label would claim owning it.

Slessor continued to say that Gwamba has, since then, been shunning songs that had him together with the HP Records lyricist.

This comes after  another celebrated rapper Tay Grin was implicated in a copyright infringement case, accused of stealing Chipapapa song from little known Zizzi-B.

Copyright Society of Malawi (Cosoma) senior licensing officer Rosario Kamanga said they only act on copyright cases when it has been established that there has been a violation.

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