Damini Ogulu, known professionally as Burna Boy, has built an international career through his recordings, touring and partnership with Atlantic Records. Yet commercial success does not automatically settle who owns the masters from an artist’s earliest releases. A dispute over the rights to parts of Burna Boy’s early catalogue has put that distinction into focus, with the parties’ competing claims still needing to be assessed through the legal process.
For context on the contract structures that determine who owns recordings, see GYOnlineNG’s guide to Nigerian record deal types.
Then a Nigerian court case started unravelling that picture.
The dispute over Burna Boy‘s early catalogue, including L.I.F.E (2013) and Redemption (2016), is a high-profile test of how ownership and company approvals are handled when a catalogue changes hands. It involves a Grammy-winning artist, his former label, a minority shareholder, a Lagos law firm, Warner Music Group, the Federal High Court in Port Harcourt, a separate criminal proceeding in Lagos and allegations of fraudulent conversion. Every party has something significant to lose.
How This Started: The 2024 Deal That Triggered Everything
The conflict traces back to May and June 2024, when Aristokrat Records, the label that launched Burna Boy‘s career in 2011, allegedly sold his historical intellectual property and master recordings to Spaceship Music, his current imprint led by him and his mother Bose Ogulu.
On the surface that sounds straightforward. Artists reclaiming their masters from early label deals is not unusual Taylor Swift‘s highly publicised attempt to re-record her first six albums brought the issue of master ownership into mainstream conversation globally, and plenty of artists since have tried to find cleaner paths to controlling their catalogues.
The problem here is not the goal. The problem here is how it was allegedly done.
960 Music Limited, which owns a 40% stake in Aristokrat Records, claims it was neither notified of nor consented to the alleged assignment of the catalogue. They further contend the transaction was executed without board or shareholder approval. That is where the legal dispute originates.
960 Music is seeking to void the transaction, recover proceeds from the alleged sale, and has initiated both civil proceedings before the Federal High Court in Port Harcourt and a separate criminal charge involving allegations of fraudulent conversion.
Burna Boy Catalogue: What Is Actually at Stake
L.I.F.E and Redemption are not just historical footnotes. They contain Like to Party, Tonight, and the early catalogue of recordings that established Burna Boy’s sonic identity before the world caught up to him. These albums continue generating streaming, licensing and publishing income across global markets, and their commercial value has risen sharply alongside the artist’s profile since they were released.
If the Port Harcourt court rules in favour of 960 Music, Burna Boy‘s own label could be forced to surrender rights to his breakout hits back to the original partners, placing those masters in legal limbo.
That is the worst-case outcome for the artist. His early catalogue the music that built him potentially passing out of his hands and into an ownership structure he cannot control, at the peak of his commercial career when those recordings are worth more than they have ever been.
Why Warner Music Was Contacted
The legal heat shifted toward Warner Music Group because it is alleged to be involved as distributor for Spaceship Music, Burna Boy’s current label structure.
Lagos-based law firm Creative Legal, acting for 960 Music, formally notified Warner Music and demanded immediate suspension of all distribution, marketing, monetisation, licensing and related commercial activities connected to the disputed works. They also demanded Warner preserve all financial and royalty records and refrain from entering any new agreements tied to the catalogue.
In March 2026, Creative Legal said it had not received a formal response by the deadline set out in its demand letter and was considering next steps on behalf of 960 Music. Public reporting reviewed for this update has not confirmed that Warner Music was later added to the civil suit.
Warner Music Group reported more than $6 billion in revenue for 2024, but that figure alone says little about how the company would assess this particular dispute. If a distributor is asked to handle recordings whose ownership is being challenged, it may need to review its contractual rights and compliance obligations. Those are potential considerations, not evidence that a court has found Warner liable or that it has been added to this case.
The Criminal Dimension
This is where the story gets more serious than a standard shareholder dispute.
The Force Criminal Investigation Department (FCID) brought a criminal case against Piriye Isokrari, founder of Aristokrat Records, over allegations connected to the catalogue transaction. In June 2026, the Federal High Court in Ikoyi dismissed that criminal case for lack of diligent prosecution after problems with the prosecution’s attendance and service of the charge. The dismissal was not a ruling on the underlying ownership dispute or a finding of guilt or innocence. The separate civil case brought by 960 Music in Port Harcourt concerns whether the catalogue transfer should be set aside.
The criminal charge concerned allegations connected to the disputed transaction, but its dismissal for lack of diligent prosecution was procedural; it did not resolve the separate civil claims. Public reports reviewed for this update did not include a substantive response from Aristokrat Records, Burna Boy‘s management or Warner Music to the allegations and legal demand. Those positions should not be inferred from the dismissal of the criminal case.
What This Tells You About Nigerian Music Business
The Burna Boy catalogue dispute is an individual legal case but it is also a reflection of something structural about how the Nigerian music industry operated during the 2010s.
Many of the deals that launched Nigeria’s biggest artists were made without the kind of contract rigour that Western labels apply. Labels signed artists on terms that were often verbal, informal, or poorly documented. Equity stakes were distributed without clear shareholder agreements. Publishing and master rights were bundled together in ways that made them difficult to separate later. None of those label owners expected those artists to become global superstars whose catalogues would be worth millions of dollars.
Then Afrobeats went global. The catalogues became valuable. And every ambiguity in every early contract became a potential legal dispute.
Davido has spoken publicly about the importance of artists owning their masters. Wizkid‘s move to Sony Music was partly about gaining more control over his output. Tems negotiated carefully before her RCA Records deal. The generation of artists coming after Burna Boy, FOLA, Asake, Ayra Starr, are building their careers with a clearer understanding of what ownership means than their predecessors had access to.
But the artists who built Afrobeats in the 2010s, Burna Boy included built it in an environment where the concept of master ownership barely existed as a practical conversation in Nigerian music. The current dispute is partly the cost of that environment catching up with the commercial reality it produced.
What Happens Next
The criminal case in Lagos was dismissed in June 2026 for lack of diligent prosecution; reports said prosecutors could potentially refile after addressing the procedural problems. The separate civil case in Port Harcourt remains the key proceeding over the validity of the catalogue transfer. The latest public reporting I could verify did not establish a final ruling in that civil case. I also found no confirmed public update showing that Warner Music Group had been added as a defendant, so its possible involvement should not be described as a completed step.
One unresolved question is whether Warner Music Group will be added to the civil proceedings or whether the parties will resolve the dispute without its joinder. Public reporting reviewed for this update has not confirmed that Warner has been added to the case.
For Burna Boy personally, the situation is what Channels Television described as a double-edged sword. The 2024 deal was almost certainly intended to give him what every major artist eventually wants control over the recordings that built their career. If the transaction holds up legally, he achieves that. If it does not, those early recordings go back into a disputed ownership structure that he may have less control over than before the deal was attempted.
” Like to Party, Tonight ” The songs that made Lagos know his name before the world did. Right now, who owns them is a matter for Nigerian courts to decide.
Nobody involved in making those records in 2013 could have anticipated that sentence in 2026. It is also a sentence that every emerging Nigerian artist with a catalogue worth protecting should read carefully.