Veteran Ghanaian artiste Samini, who once stole all our hearts as a plucky young hiplife star known as ‘Batman’, says he made Shatta Wale popular and the so-called ‘dancehall king’ should be thanking him rather than crticizing him.
The two have had a bloody feud in recent years, but Samini claims that was all a ploy by Shatta Wale to gain relevance when he resurfaced in 2013 after ten years underground.
Samini told Bola Ray on the Starr Chat on Wednesday that by attacking him, Shatta Wale gained prominence and became popular thus the brash star owes his career to him.
“He [Shatta Wale] should always say thanks to the blueprint [Samini] because I’ve been there and he looked at me, targeted me, he threw shots at me because I was on top and still at the top, he knows that. So I became his main target…” Samini said.
“…I was minding my business, doing my thing and the last time I remember having any encounter with him was when I put him on a my tour in 2004…I recognised him as the next dancehall artiste coming up…”
He continued: “The next time I heard singles, shots being thrown at me, fabricated stories here and there, and then he will go on radio saying I sabotaged him and I made sure he didn’t play the Beenie Man concert and I told promoters, show organisers not to put him on gigs, I never did that so I went on a radio station and I challenged him to show me one person, one promoter who would testify that I did that and then we call a spade a spade.
“These are stuff that you do to get attention and then when you have good songs, when you get the attention, you push the songs through and that’s what he did. [It made him popular and through that I made him popular],” he added.
Despite their constant battles, Samini said he likes Shatta Wale, although he added that his songs are ‘bubble gum’ songs – songs without substance which hit for a while and then disappear.