Encomium
-Peter releases single, Paul floats own label
…all the drama from the home of Africa’s biggest singing duo
The day many dreaded may have come to fruition as Africa’s biggest singing and dancing duo, P Square have parted ways with both brothers pursuing separate interests.
The last few weeks has seen the gifted twin brothers in the news for all the wrong reasons, with intra-family feuds and disagreements spiralling out of control and onto social media.
One half of the Jos, Plateau-bred entertainers, Peter had taken to Twitter on February 16 to express his displeasure at their older brother, Jude who doubles as their manager and video director. He criticised his management style which he said lacked structure in a series of emotion-laden tweets, asking in one of them “how can you run a business with no structure?”
He reiterated in subsequent tweets, “P Square is not breaking up. But the management needs to go”, “I stand here 100% for my brother Paul and P Square but not with our so called management #period” before adding, “legal or no legal, we don’t owe him. We don’t even have a contract with him, so it’s all good”. He ended by saying Jude was fired and was no longer representing their interest’s saying, “Please, whosoever makes any transaction with Northside Entertainment or Jude Okoye on P Square’s behalf does so at their own risk.”
He, however, stressed that the duo were not breaking up but were only changing management.
Paul, the other half of the duo, on his part took to Instagram to express his support for Jude. He posted a photograph of himself and Jude which originally had Peter but was this time cut out and replaced with the picture of a studio, and captioned it, “This is where I belong and this is where I stand. You do music in the studio, not on social media, you have family issues, you discuss that in close doors, not on social media. Family is family, blood is blood. If you don’t do family business, then who am I to you??”
Alas, it seems the center could no longer hold and the brothers have agreed that they are better off solo and “doing their thing” without the other – drawing the curtain on a union that has served Africa and the world with hits after hits.
Peter, who now goes by the moniker Mr P, owns P-Classic Records, shunning the jointly-owned Square Records under which they have released five of their six albums.
On March 8, he released his first solo single entitled, ‘Look into my eyes’ and performed as an individual artiste at a gig in Abuja on Sunday, March 14. He’s also scheduled to perform alone on April 7, 2016 in Dubai, UAE.
Paul has also had his hands full. He’s been busy with his new Rudeboy Records signees, Muno and Lucy.
ENCOMIUM Weekly also contacted the group’s publicist, Bayo Adetu to get his reaction to the whole saga. After several failed attempts to reach him, he answered our call but declined commenting on the issue, saying, “I don’t have anything to say about it. If I have any official reaction, I’ll do a press release and send across.” He hung up before we could press for further comments.
Our reporter also sent a text message which read, “Hello, I think it’s best you respond to state the true state of things, else rumours will keep flying around and people will cook up all sorts of falsehood about the P Square saga. Expecting your response. Thanks.”
But he didn’t respond until we went to press.
-MICHAEL NWOKIKE
