Battle Lines Drawn As Rights To The Late GeeSixFive’s Music Heats Up
Of late many celebrities have made much money even if they are dead from their royalties, endorsements and music. The late pop star M.Jackson is a good example as well as Mzansi’s very own, Sfiso Ncwane.
With this in mind, the family of celebrated star musician GeeSixFive are in a nasty battle with the latter’s producer over an EP project which is yet to be released. The battle over the rights to GeeSixFive’s music is on.
The late musician family wants to release a seven-track EP paying tribute to her. Alas! her producer and manager, Sphe Khanyile of Marimba Records, is singing from a different hymnal. Sphe claims that all rights to her songs belong to him.
Battle Lines Drawn As Rights To The Late GeeSixFive’s Music Heats Up
GeeSixFive, whose real name was Olpha Selepe, died in December last year after she released her debut single, Obani Labantu. The EP will include a remix of Obani Labantu, and the original song will be released on Tuesday, 9 February. Sphe said he had no agreement with anyone to release the song and would seek legal advice.
“Her family told me they’ll be doing a tribute EP for GeeSixFive with other producers and I refused, but they’re going ahead because they said they have the rights,” he said.
“I feel as if they’re undermining my work of producing the song,” he said.
The disgruntled producer even lashed out at the family for not taking him on board as they own GeeSixFive. He even indicated that they thrust GeeSixFive into the limelight. Despite all this, Sphe even spilt the beans that Marinda Records came up with her stage name.
However, GeeSixFive’s son, Fika, said the family owns the intellectual rights to the song.
“We explained to Khanyile that my mother owns the intellectual rights to the lyrics and we can do whatever we want with it,” said Fika.
“We’ll feature the original done by him and credit him on the original song. The EP has remixes where we added vocals by Blue Lights.
“We also have an electro genre done by a producer named Magic Fingers from Mpumalanga.”
He said they were finishing what their mother started.