Following allegations by Paul Okoye a.k.a Rudeboy that his twin brother Peter Okoye a.k.a Mr. P stole his song “Winning” and released it, Mr. P came up with a statement Sunday to state that his other half lied.
Mr. P in a lengthy social media post explained that the song was a joint effort by both brothers based on his own original idea. He said he wrote the first verse and Rudeboy was supposed to add a verse.
Mr. P wrote: “If you have followed my journey as a solo artiste and even before, you will notice that I give people their due credit where necessary as I am a firm believer in team work; I know my strengths, where I need assistance or guidance I am not afraid to ask or work with those who are strong in the areas I am not; this includes the process of creating music, executing concepts and ideas etc. I will always give people their due credit for their contributions to my projects.
“Sometime in June 2022, I stumbled upon a producer based in Ghana named Vampire and had my team and I also personally reached out to him via DM, that I liked his work and was interested in working with him. Before getting him to Lagos, I presented the idea of this producer to my twin brother and our team, getting their buy in before I got him flight tickets and flew him to Lagos.
“It was when he got into Lagos I asked if he would be open to working on P-SQUARE’s next album project, that the 5 songs I had penned down from my end to be presented to our A&R team for the album project these were: JAIYE, WINNING, FIND SOMEBODY, LEGENDARY, and ATTENTION, based on tracks he had produced.
“We started with my own 5 songs that needed to be submitted for PSQUARE’s album, which he produced for me: The idea for WINNING came from one of his beats that I discovered. I came up with the idea of changing the chord progression from the original version to what it is today with my own producer Goldswarm who is the co-producer of the song WINNING.
“I had also engaged a songwriter known as CALYPSO who wrote and composed the song WINNING and sent it to me on the beats through a voice note. And we started working on the song. Mind you, he worked on some other songs that were to make the album as well, so my brother was aware of his input to the production as we were all in the studio during this period.
“Then when my twin brother heard the song WINNING, which we had already created the hook/chorus for, he then wanted to start creating a verse. Our agreed-on process for each song presented by us was arrange the song, leave a verse for the other person, then we both harmonise the chorus and refrain bits together. He wasn’t supposed to until Calypso and I finished it as part of my own song submission to the LEGENDARY ALBUM.
“After that, we finished and shared verses among ourselves. I do not wish to get into details of why the album didn’t see the light of day till date but it takes a different level of psychosis for one to steal what is theirs already; as since the release of this song, I have been labeled and called all sorts online and they have even gone as far as asking for the song to be taken down on various platforms, to what end?
“If it were his song, why do I have all the music data including initial conversations and picture/video evidence on the above-mentioned titles/songs? Which of his songs do I have its data in my possession in that case? All because he was hoping for me to quit music. Even when I learnt that he had removed my vocals on songs we did together, suggesting that he sing the entire songs including the ones that he planned to present for the album without my input (a very absurd idea as we both make up the duo not just the one), but we both perform them on stage, I begun to have a rethink of the entire situation. Let me leave this here.”
