Bongo flava star Diamond Platunmz has claimed that his smash hit ‘Komasava remix‘ featuring American pop and RnB star Jason Derulo was labeled ‘trash’ by one of the world’s biggest record labels, Warner Music Group (WMG).
Released four months ago, the song and its music video have garnered over 31 million views on YouTube and were the top trending song on the platform in Kenya and Tanzania for an entire week when it was first released on July 26.
On Spotify, ‘Komasava remix’ has received over 8.2 million streams to date.
Diamond now claims that when he first submitted the song to Warner, with whom he has a deal to distribute his music, they turned it down, calling it ‘trash’.
“I have a song ‘Komasava’ that is now very big worldwide. When I submitted that song to my distributor, which is Warner, they didn’t want it. They said it’s trash, they said this song we don’t want to take it,” Diamond told Deutsche Welle (DW) in a recent interview.
According to his contract, Diamond is supposed to submit certain songs to Warner for distribution, and he says he did not doubt that ‘Komasava’ was exactly the kind of material he was supposed to submit.
Also Read: Diamond’s, Jason Derulo trending ‘Komasava Remix’ cost Sh24 million
“So when they didn’t want to take the song, I went home and listened to the song and thought, ‘Why don’t they get this song, this song is a hit’. So I dropped it.” He adds.
Diamond claims he was never given a satisfactory explanation by Warner as to why Komasava, which he presented at the Grammys, didn’t fit the bill.
“You know, when you work with these big distribution and record and labels, they still have this old mindset. They believe in you singing in English or they believe in the old type of sounds that were big. So when you give them a new sound, they don’t want to take it”. Diamond claimed.
But after the song was released and became a huge hit, even catching the attention of some international stars like U.S. soccer player Paul Pogba and pop star Chris Brown, Warner had a change of heart.
“After the song came out they wanted it and I told my manager I don’t want them to have it because they rejected the song. Look at Chris Brown dancing to that song. Swae Lee loved the song, he wanted us to do the song. Jason Derulo himself wanted a remix.”