King Promise’s Masters Moved From a Ghanaian Label to a Sony-Backed One in 2020. What Happened to the Earlier Catalogue Isn’t on Record.

What changed hands: the identity of whoever controls King Promise’s masters, at least on paper. His 2019 debut album, As Promised, carries a phonogram credit naming Legacy Life Entertainment, the Tema-based label run by producer Killbeatz, as owner of the recordings, licensed on an exclusive basis to Mr Eazi’s emPawa Africa Limited. Every King Promise release this desk could find catalogued from December 2020 onward carries a different formula: “under exclusive licence to 5K Records Limited / Sony Music Entertainment UK Limited,” naming no licensor at all. Somewhere between mid-2019 and the release of the single “Alright” that December, Legacy Life Entertainment’s name dropped out of his public credit line, and nothing in the public record says where it went.

What the 2019 credit line says

Apple’s own iTunes catalogue lookup, read directly by this desk on 31 August 2026, returns the phonogram line for As Promised (released 15 July 2019) as: “℗ 2019 Legacy Life Entertainment Under Exclusive License to emPawa Africa Limited.” Legacy Life Entertainment is the label Killbeatz, born Joseph Kwame Addison and a member of the group R2Bees, runs as chief executive; GhanaWeb identified him in that role in a 26 May 2021 piece that separately describes King Promise as a current “Legacy Life Entertainment signee.” emPawa Africa Limited is the pan-African talent and funding vehicle founded by Mr Eazi. The 2019 structure is unambiguous on paper: a Ghanaian label owns the masters, and a separate pan-African company holds an exclusive licence to distribute them.

What replaced it

The single “Alright,” a duet with Shatta Wale released 11 December 2020, carries a different phonogram line entirely: “℗ 2020 under exclusive licence to 5K Records Limited / Sony Music Entertainment UK Limited.” This desk read the same formula, with only the year changed, on the album 5 Star (22 July 2022) and the album True To Self (14 June 2024), each pulled directly from Apple’s catalogue. None of the three names a licensor. Legacy Life Entertainment does not appear on any King Promise release this desk could find dated after 2019.

Independent UK trade coverage puts a name to the new arrangement quickly. Music Week reported on 26 January 2021 that Sony Music Entertainment was partnering with 5K Records in a joint venture, and listed King Promise among a small batch of new signings alongside London’s Keeya Keys and Manchester’s Robin Knightz. Ghanaian outlets picked the story up that spring: MyJoyOnline, on 7 May 2021, reported King Promise’s signing to “5K Records/Sony Music UK,” and Pulse Ghana, two days earlier, called him the label’s “first global signing.” None of that coverage, Ghanaian or British, mentions Legacy Life Entertainment, mentions what happened to the 2019 catalogue, or states a territory, a term or a fee.

A label with no African address

5K Records Limited is a real, filed company, not a marketing label for an existing Sony imprint. UK Companies House lists it as company number 12658751, incorporated 10 June 2020 with a registered office in Manchester, under SIC code 59200, sound recording and music publishing activities. Its persons-with-significant-control register, read directly by this desk, names three individuals: Jonathan Kweku Awotwe Mensah, better known as the producer JAE5, Mohamed Magid Bah, and Mohamed Alieu Jalloh, each holding more than 25 percent but not more than 50 percent of shares. No corporate entity appears on that register. Sony’s name is not on it.

That absence does not settle the question of Sony’s stake. UK law only requires a persons-with-significant-control filing for holdings above 25 percent of shares or voting rights, so a smaller Sony equity position, or a joint venture structured as a contract rather than a shareholding, would leave no trace on this particular register. Music Week’s description of 5K as a Sony joint venture and Sony’s own trade coverage of the label are not contradicted by the PSC filing; they simply operate on a different legal question than the one Companies House answers.

The officers register adds one detail worth naming and one worth being careful with. Bah and Mensah have been directors since incorporation in June 2020; Jalloh resigned a director role in June 2021 and was reappointed in April 2023. A fourth director, Jonathan Dickins, was appointed 13 June 2023. This desk searched for any public connection between that name and any other public figure sharing it and found none, so no claim is made here beyond what the registry itself states: a director by that name sits on 5K Records’ board as of 2023.

The gap this record does not fill

What this record cannot do is trace the 2019 masters forward. No source read by this desk, not Companies House’s filings for 5K Records, not the UK or Ghanaian trade coverage of the signing, states whether King Promise’s recording agreement moved from Legacy Life Entertainment to 5K Records, whether Legacy Life retained any ongoing interest in his catalogue, or whether the 5K Records/Sony arrangement covers only material recorded after December 2020. Ghana has no public company registry this desk can query, so Legacy Life Entertainment’s own incorporation and ownership records could not be checked independently of the trade press description of Killbeatz as its chief executive. Two outlets, Ghana Music and MuseAfrica, appear in search results with December 2020 datelines for the original signing announcement, earlier than any source this desk could actually open and read; their pages returned access errors on direct request, so that earlier date is not relied on here. The earliest source this desk could read and verify is Music Week’s 26 January 2021 report; Apple’s own catalogue shows the new credit-line formula already in force twelve days earlier, on “Alright,” 11 December 2020, and that catalogue date is stated here as a separate, unconfirmed-by-press data point, not as the announced deal date.

What this means for artists

The lesson is not that something improper happened. Artists routinely move labels, and a credit line that drops the name of a previous rights holder is often exactly what you would expect when a new recording agreement begins: newer songs are simply owned, from the moment of creation, by whoever financed the new deal, with no “licensor” required because there was no prior owner to license from. The catalogue evidence here is fully consistent with that ordinary explanation.

What it should prompt, for any artist or manager reading their own credit lines the way this desk read King Promise’s, is a habit rather than a suspicion: ask, in writing, exactly which entity controls each piece of a catalogue, and get that answer updated every time a deal changes. A phonogram credit is a useful public signal, not a substitute for the contract behind it. It will tell you that a name changed. It will not tell you why, what happened to the masters that came before, or what share, if any, the new partner actually holds in the company whose name now sits on your record. Those answers exist only in paperwork that, in King Promise’s case as in most African artists’ cases, nobody outside the parties to the deal can currently see.

It is also a reminder of what a joint-venture structure like 5K Records actually is from the outside. A UK registry filing can confirm who owns the company. It cannot confirm what that company owns, or licenses, or on what terms, from the artists signed to it. Trade coverage calling an arrangement a “joint venture” and a company registry showing no corporate shareholder are both true at once, and an artist’s leverage in that structure depends on details, term, territory, reversion rights, that neither document discloses.