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Opinions of Wednesday, 12 April 2017

Columnist: Emmanuel Asamoah

VGMA 2017 – A total joke

Logo of vodafone music Awards Logo of vodafone music Awards

Ghana Music Awards (GMA) is held annually to honor and celebrate hardworking Ghanaians who have made incredible contributions to Ghana music.

Vodafone being the headline sponsor hence VGMA has come under a lot of criticism for being bias and unreal.

For some years now there have been mixed feelings about the most enviable award category which is the Artiste of the Year.

In 2015 when Stonebwoy won the award, many held the view that Shatta Wale deserved it but because of his differences with event organizers Charter House. He did not take part in the awards.

Same happened in 2016 when E.L ( Lomi ) won. Entertainment critic Socrate Sarfo publicly burst out on a show that the winner did not deserve the award.

Well 2017 is no different. Few weeks to the show, Guru had to pull out his nominations and George Quaye of Charter House came under a lot of pressure from gospel musicians when he made his infamous comment that gospel musicians try to bribe him for the award.

This opened the conversation “why no gospel musician has won the Artiste of the Year?” .

Few hours to the show, renowned sound engineer Hammer of The Last Two chimed in on Facebook ‘why we are celebrating Ghana music without the most hardworking Ghanaian musician Charles Nii Armah ( Shatta Wale )”.

He put across that Charter House thought Shatta Wale won’t reign for long but obviously, the guy is here to stay and should be given a place in the award ceremony.

With all that being said expectation for this year’s awards was still high, Charter House had another opportunity to redeem themselves.

The lime lights were on Medikal and bae Sister Derby the Power Couple dubbed the Jay Z and Beyonce.

Medikal a promising lad from Sowutuom who records under the label AMG has been very consistent since his introduction into the music scene by AMG CEO Criss Waddle.

He has several hits to his name with the latest being “Too Risky”.

Arguably the leader of the new school with his core fans being students, he had seven nominations and even made it into the Artiste of the Year category.

Another category to look out for was the Best rapper of the Year. The category had Sarkodie and M.anifest who engaged in a rap beef some time back.

The former dropping “Kanta” as a response to the latter’s “God MC” which made its way into the nominations. One would say well, that settles it.

The awards ceremony took off with Ghone’s finest Berla Mundi and at a time a playboy Elikem the “Tailor” handling things on the red carpet.

It wasn’t long till the memes started to trickle in.

Come and see on twitter and facebook. Ghanaians play too much.

To whoever is reading this let me save your time . Long story short Charter House broke our hearts again.

You only had one job the whole year and this is how prepared you are. The event experienced “Dum” all pun intended at the point that we weren’t even sure there was going to be a “Sor”.

Talk about award winners for the night Rapper Medikal trended on social media for the wrong reasons.

Out of the seven nominations he won none. Yes, not even the Best New Act.

To whoever won that award I’ve never heard of you since the awards but congrats. I’m sure you and your team worked very hard for it.

So finally a gospel musician wins the Artiste of the Year after they threatened to boycott the awards and put up their own award show. Well, congrats Joe Mettle.

This is sickening. Its about time we get serious as Ghanaians.

A guy tweeted trying to compare Medikal’s snub to what happened to Kendrick at the 2014 Grammy Awards.

We all know Kendrick’s had to do with race. Even Macklemore admitted. But Medikal’s I simply “Can’t Think Far”.

If really the people had 70% of the votes, how come Medikal lost to an award winner whom the people barely knew before the awards?