Damilola “Dapper” Akinwunmi broke his silence on Sunday, August 16, publicly rejecting the royalty and catalogue-sale allegations levelled against him by three of the biggest names to come out of his label, T.I Blaze, Shallipopi and Seyi Vibez, and daring all three to submit contracts and financial records to an independent forensic auditor. “I have nothing to hide. The records exist. The authorities have them. Let the process establish the truth,” Akinwunmi said, according to Leadership and Prompt News Online, both of which quoted the statement in full on the day it was posted.
The rebuttal closes, at least for now, the one-sided window InterSpace Daily flagged when we first covered this story on August 15: Dapper Music had not responded to any of the three artists’ claims as of that piece’s publication. That has changed. What follows is Dapper’s side, on the record, weighed against what the artists actually said.
What the artists alleged, briefly restated
T.I Blaze opened the round on the night of August 14, posting on X to ask how “1.2 billion naira” in revenue had gone unexplained and questioning how Virgin Music, Dapper’s major-label partner since 2023, came to take a cut of an arrangement he said should have paid Dapper 30 percent and nothing more. Shallipopi followed with the sharpest claims: that Dapper withheld royalties from 46 of his songs, including his hit “E Don Cast,” and sold his back catalogue to Virgin Music without properly accounting for the proceeds. He said he would file a report with Nigeria’s Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. Seyi Vibez, who split from the label in September 2024, alleged catalogue money was funding cosmetic procedures for chef Hilda Baci, reportedly Akinwunmi’s partner, a claim she has not directly addressed on the record.
None of those figures, a song count, a naira total, a specific contract clause, have been independently verified through a filed royalty statement, an audit or a court document. They remain claims made by the artists on social media, not established findings.
Dapper’s counter: an audit challenge, not a denial by silence
Akinwunmi did not simply deny the claims; he tried to shift the fight onto neutral ground. Per Prompt News Online, he proposed a specific list of independent reviewers, KPMG, PwC, Deloitte, Templars, Aluko & Oyebode, Olaniwun Ajayi LP and Udo Udoma & Belo-Osagie, all established Nigerian or international audit and law firms, and said the results would settle “who owes who.” He also claimed an audit had already been carried out by an outside firm, saying, per Prompt News Online: “We already did an audit from a reputable company! Surprise, surprise, who owes who?” No audit report has been made public, and InterSpace Daily has not independently reviewed one.
On the specifics, Akinwunmi disputed Shallipopi’s timeline. Leadership reported he questioned “who had actually benefited whom” in the relationship, said the partnership traced back to 2021 when he funded an artist’s debut project before receiving any music in return, and pushed back on the forgery claim Shallipopi has raised around a foreign-label signature, an allegation that itself sits uneasily against Shallipopi’s own 2024 public comments about being pressured into a Dapper Digital deal. Akinwunmi also disputed a specific factual claim about a missed event appearance, saying he was the one who showed up and Shallipopi was not.
Why the forgery claim still doesn’t clear our bar
Shallipopi’s allegation that his signature was forged on a deal with a foreign label is the most serious individual claim in this dispute, serious enough that, if proven, it would be a criminal matter. It is also the claim with the thinnest sourcing: it exists only as a social-media post from Shallipopi, disputed directly by Akinwunmi, with no forensic document examination, police report or court filing behind it from either side. InterSpace Daily is reporting that the claim was made and that it has been contested, not that a forgery occurred. Readers should treat it exactly that way until an actual document or authority weighs in.
The pattern behind the noise
This is not Dapper Music’s first exit dispute. Seyi Vibez left in September 2024 after backlash over a cancelled Canadian tour; his former protege Muyeez exited soon after alleging unpaid royalties across three EPs, around the same time Shallipopi first announced he was ending his own arrangement with the label, before a newer deal between Shallipopi and Dapper surfaced earlier this year. Dapper Group’s growth was built substantially on its 2023 partnership with Virgin Music, which stood up Vibez Inc with Seyi Vibez and Plutomania Records with Shallipopi, the same partnership now at the center of the transparency questions being asked by the artists who built careers through it.
That is the part of this story that outlasts the X thread. Independent Nigerian labels are increasingly striking major-backed distribution and catalogue arrangements to buy artists global reach, and artists are increasingly finding out the terms of those arrangements after the fact rather than negotiating them upfront. Akinwunmi’s forensic-audit offer, if it actually happens and the results are made public, would be a rare instance of that kind of dispute getting resolved with paperwork instead of a trending topic. Until then, this is a standoff between one label’s word and three artists’ word, and neither side has produced the document that would end it.
