Tuabodom, released in the early 2000’s roamed the suburbs of Ghana like wildfire but while you enjoyed it, one half of Nkasei – Shy has come out to speak on how it ruined their lives!
Kwame Godlove Yeboah Prah, formerly professionally called Shy, a member of the Hiplife duo Nkasei, has shared that their hit ‘Tuabodom’ destroyed their career and made them flee Ghana fearing for their lives.
The song was released in the early 2000s and was named after a Bono East town in Ghana.
In the four minute song, Shy and his partner Isaac Mensah, alias Naa K, singing and rapping told a story about students from Tuabodom visiting a city, Kumasi, for the first time and being mesmerised by its advancements such as tarred roads, fridges, TVs, fans and entertainment centres.
Nkasei, in the satirical Hiplife piece, performed in the Bono language and accent, also blundered calling Jinijini, an independent traditional area, the capital of Tuabodom.
The Appietus-produced song enraged the people and traditional leaders of the said town and the Bono area as they regarded the song as an unbridled ridicule of their language and peoples. The song’s controversy came up on the floor of Parliament also.
Speaking to CTV’s Sammy Flex on the Class Showbiz programme, Tuesday, February 28, 2023, Shy, now known asHerven Tayles, detailed how the song put he and his mate’s life in danger and truncated their career as music makers.
“The radio stopped playing the song,” he said. “Because they tried to put… like a ban on it to make sure that they’d stop playing the music.
“Due to the fact that the song was not playing anymore and it was surrounded by negativity, we did not gain what was due us by performances and things like that. We didn’t get a lot of that,” he said.
“It cut short our plans concerning the project. We couldn’t do a lot of things,” he added.
He explained that ‘Tuabodom’ was the lead single for their album.
The rapper revealed that Nkasei was counting on the success of ‘Tuabodom’ to release other songs on the album and project them all into the limelight.
“Since all the attention was given to ‘Tuabodom’,” and the controversial hit song’s success was truncated, “we couldn’t make those decisions [moves],” he said.
He admitted, however, that “within a short period of time, in terms of sales,” the song made them money that “the rest of the albums could not.”
Despite this, ‘Tuabodom’, unlike the other songs, did not bring “much [bookings for] shows and other things,” he stated.
He insinuated that if the song had not received much opposition, it would have brought in more money.
He also admitted that the group was well aware of how touchy the song was from creation to promotion.
However, they thought “it was old news and they would not take it too seriously. We thought it’d be interesting to make a song out of it and probably people would take it as a mere song, and sheer entertainment.
“We thought they’d vibe to it and everybody would be happy and we’d probably make a few quid [money] out of it.”
He revealed that Nkasei received “a lot of” threats because the song angered some people.
“Even now in the UK,” he added. “Ghanaians living in the UK who are from the Brong and Ahafo areas. They didn’t take it lightly.”
He confessed that if the group had known this was going to be the consequences of the song, they would have shelved it.
He, however, stressed that the song had no malicious intentions but “it was just entertainment. We thought everybody would be happy about it.”
Sammy asked if the backlash affected the group’s career.
“It has greatly,” he responded. “After ‘Tuabodom’ nothing really went on for us.”
“After ‘Tuabodom’, nothing really really moved. After ‘Tuabodom’, we then had to leave the country, and through that, we separated and so on and so forth,” he stated, adding that the group, partially, fled the country for fear of their lives.
“We thought maybe being out there would be slightly safer for a while and then we can probably come back later and then continue with our career and stuff,” he also said.
The group would soon discover that “nowhere is safe for you especially where there are Ghanaians that come from BA [Brong and Ahafo Regions],” he indicated.
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