Three different companies are currently named as the owner of the master recordings on 2Baba’s 2004 debut album Face 2 Face. The 11-track edition on sale today credits A Guy Entertainment. The 18-track reissue credits Kennis Music. A five-track cut of the same reissue credits Hypertek Digital, the artist’s own label. All three resolve live, in more than one storefront, today. No sale, assignment, reversion or licence that would explain the difference exists in any document this desk could find.
The detail that makes this worth reading past the metadata: A Guy Entertainment is 2Baba’s management company, unveiled on 8 July 2025. It is named as the phonogram owner of an album recorded twenty-one years before it was introduced to the public.
What changed hands, and what did not#
Nothing documented changed hands. That is the finding, and it is not the same as saying nothing happened.
A master is owned by whoever holds the sound recording copyright. The industry publishes that answer on every release in the phonographic copyright line, the one beginning with a P in a circle: supplied by the rights holder, and the closest thing recorded music has to a public register. When two live products of the same album name different companies there, one is wrong, or there is an instrument nobody has published.
The original album, as sold today. Eleven tracks, release date 15 May 2004, opening on “Intro (Skit)” and carrying “African Queen”. Apple’s credit reads “℗ 2004 A Guy Entertainment”. Deezer returns the same eleven tracks, the same date, and a label field of A Guy Entertainment against UPC 797885464507. A seventeen-track South African edition carries the same name.
The 2014 reissue. Face 2 Face 10.0, eighteen tracks, release date 17 December 2014, the original eleven remastered plus seven extras. Apple reads “℗ 2014 Kennis Music”. Deezer returns label Kennis Music against UPC 889176325038.
The 2021 EP cut. Five tracks from the same reissue package, dated 14 May 2021, credited “℗ 2021 Hypertek Digital”. That is Hypertek Digital, the label 2Baba built for himself.
The physical record backs Kennis, and only Kennis#
Digital credit lines can be rewritten by whoever controls the delivery account. A pressed CD cannot, so the physical product is the better evidence.
The credit transcription for the Nigerian CD, catalogue number KMVCD 037, names Kennis Music twice: once under Phonographic Copyright, once under Copyright. The first covers the recordings, the second the album as a published work. A third credit, Kenny Ogungbe Music Publishing, sits under Published By, covering the compositions. The rights society printed on the product is BMI. That is a label-owned record on both sides, with the publishing parked in a separately named company.
Three further editions of the album sit under Kennis Music there: a Nigerian CD at KMCD 080, a South African edition at KMSA 0001, and a worldwide digital edition. A rights registry search returns both Face 2 Face and the 2006 follow-up Grass 2 Grace under Kennis Music. A 2006 single, “For Instance”, reads “℗ 2006 Kennis Music”.
The same release database contains no label called A Guy Entertainment at all. Its name appears on this album nowhere except the live digital storefronts.
A management company on an ownership line#
When 2Baba unveiled A Guy Entertainment on 8 July 2025, every report described the same thing: a new management team, arriving a year after he parted from his previous management, with a mandate covering releases, brand partnerships, global engagements and creative collaborations, and a named head of legal and communications. Not one source described a label, a catalogue acquisition, or the ownership of a recording.
Management and ownership are different jobs. A manager represents an artist and takes a commission. A phonogram owner holds a copyright, licenses it, collects on it and can sell it. A management company in the ownership line of a 2004 master is therefore either a catalogue acquisition nobody announced, or a delivery artefact, in which case the credit on one of Nigeria’s most important albums currently says something untrue.
Two details sit against the acquisition reading. The company is also named as phonogram owner on the single “KUKU GOOGLE AM”, dated 25 October 2024, nine months before it was publicly unveiled. And the three products carrying its credit sit in three different barcode prefixes: 797885 on the album edition, 198622 on “KUKU GOOGLE AM”, 705610 on “Salary 4 Life”. A prefix identifies whoever registered the product, so three prefixes under one credit reads as changes of distributor, not a company administering its own catalogue.
No company of that name appears on the UK register. Nigeria’s Corporate Affairs Commission publishes no searchable database, so the Nigerian register was not checked and the UK absence proves nothing about whether the company is registered at home.
Seven ownership credits in four years#
The Face 2 Face conflict is the sharpest case, but it is not isolated. Read 2Baba’s own-billed catalogue in date order and the ownership line changes repeatedly:
- Hypertek Digital across the five albums dated 1 January 2014, Warriors in February 2020, Unstoppable International in April 2021, and most singles between.
- “Hypertek Digital/Chocolate City Music” on the 2016 single “Babylon”: two companies, one line, no licence wording to say which does what.
- “Now Muzik Entertainment Services Ltd” on one release of “5050”, the only credit in the catalogue naming his former management firm as owner.
- “Def Jam Recordings Africa / Hypertek / Gaaga Entertainment” on “Mad Over Hills”, “Bebe” and the Rebirth EP. Three names, pipe-separated, silent on which of them owns.
- REBIRTH Music on “Celebrate” and “Balling”, both December 2025.
- “2baba / Yankee Entertainment Under Exclusive license to CiDAR Africa” on “Mental” with Fave, September 2026. The first credit in the catalogue to put his own name on the ownership side, and the only one using licence wording properly: named owners, named licensee, no ambiguity.
Two registries also disagree about the 2025 deluxe edition of Unstoppable: one carries “℗ 2025 HYPERTEK DIGITAL”, the other a label field of Chocolate City Music for the identical title and date. That contradiction is recorded in the deal record and not resolved here.
What this desk could not establish#
No transaction. There is no documented sale, assignment, reversion or buy-back of these masters, and no party has published a statement claiming or conceding ownership. There is no deal value to withhold, because there is no disclosed deal.
No corporate ownership for Kennis Music, A Guy Entertainment or CiDAR Africa: Nigeria has no public company register API. One caution. The UK register carries two companies called Hypertek, classified in technical testing and in computer repair, and a similarly named company surfaces on a search for CiDAR. None is a music business and none is connected to 2Baba by anything read here. Name collisions, not findings.
The current publishing position could not be established: the main public mechanical rights search returns nothing machine-readable and the relevant publisher site was not fetchable. On the record already, Hypertek signed a worldwide publishing agreement with Sony/ATV in September 2020 covering 2Baba’s catalogue, documented in our record of the 960 Music Group dispute over Hypertek. Publishing administration is not master ownership, and that agreement says nothing about who holds the 2004 recordings.
What this means for artists#
Your ownership line is a public claim, and whoever controls your delivery account writes it. The phonographic credit is not a legal instrument, but it is what collecting societies, licensing agents and sync supervisors read to find the owner. If it is wrong, the money and the licences follow the wrong name until someone notices. Audit the P line on every product you have live, including editions you forgot were still for sale.
Never let a management company sit in the ownership line. Managers come and go, usually faster than copyrights do. If your manager’s company name is on your masters, every change of management becomes a rights negotiation rather than a staffing decision. Keep a separate rights-holding entity that you control and that outlives any service provider.
Insist on licence wording. “Owner X under exclusive licence to Y” is precise and legible. “X / Y / Z” separated by slashes or pipes is not: it tells nobody who owns, who licenses and who merely distributes. The newest release in this catalogue gets it right while older ones do not, so the fix costs nothing but attention.
Reissues are where ownership quietly moves. A remaster or anniversary cut is a new product with a new barcode and a new credit line, and it can be delivered by a different party to the original. In time it becomes the version everybody streams, and its credit becomes the de facto answer. Approve the credit line in writing, not just the audio.
Keep the physical artefact. The only hard evidence in this story is the printed credits on a CD pressed in Nigeria more than twenty years ago. Digital metadata is editable by whoever holds the account. A pressed sleeve is not.
Face 2 Face ownership: quick answers#
Who owns 2Baba’s Face 2 Face masters?#
No single owner is documented. The edition selling today credits A Guy Entertainment, the 2014 reissue credits Kennis Music, and a 2021 cut credits Hypertek Digital. The pressed Nigerian CD credits Kennis Music alone.
Is A Guy Entertainment a record label?#
It was introduced in July 2025 as 2Baba’s management company. No source read here describes it as a label, or as the buyer of any catalogue.
Did 2Baba buy back his masters?#
Not on any document this desk could find. No sale, assignment, reversion or buy-back of these recordings has been published by any party named in the credits.
Any document establishing the chain of title, or a statement from a company named in these credits, will be published here and the deal record updated. No party was asked for comment on this piece.
