On 4 September 2020 Ice Prince was announced as a signing to 300 Entertainment, the New York label then home to Young Thug and Megan Thee Stallion, and reported as its first African artist. No terms were disclosed, then or since. Only two releases carry the label’s phonogram credit: the single that landed with the announcement, and one more six months later. Fifteen months after the signing, Warner Music Group bought the company behind that credit outright, paying $394m for every share in Theory Entertainment LLC.
That purchase is the only primary document in this story. Everything about the deal Ice Prince himself signed rests on an announcement and on label strings in streaming metadata, and two of those strings now contradict each other.
What changed hands, and what did not#
Four words get used interchangeably and mean four different things. To own a recording is to hold its copyright. To licence is to grant defined permission to use a right you keep. To distribute is to move a recording into shops and streaming services. Only the first is a transfer.
Which of these Ice Prince agreed to is not established. Contemporary coverage described a record and distribution deal. No contract, filing or press release from either side sets out the grant of rights, the term or the territory, so the scope of what was assigned or licensed cannot be stated. The phonogram line, the P in a circle at the foot of a release page, is the only rights information either platform publishes. It names whoever the delivered metadata says holds the recording. It is not a chain of title.
The credit starts on the day of the announcement and stops six months later#
Ice Prince, born Panshak Henry Zamani in Jos, spent his first decade on Chocolate City Music. Apple credits Everybody Loves Ice Prince (9 October 2011) and Fire of Zamani (28 October 2013) to “Chocolate City Music”, and Deezer agrees on both. By 2018 it had moved: C.O.L.D, 29 June 2018, reads “P 2018 Super Cool Cats” on Apple and carries the same label on Deezer, his own imprint.
Then the 300 window opens, and it is narrow. “Make Up Your Mind”, featuring Tekno, released 4 September 2020, the day of the announcement: “P 2020 300 Entertainment” on Apple, label “300 Entertainment” on Deezer under UPC 810043682114. “KOLO”, featuring Oxlade, released 11 March 2021: “P 2021 300 Entertainment” on Apple, the same on Deezer under UPC 810043684347. Two singles, six months apart, both platforms agreeing.
After that the credit disappears and does not return. Fire & Ice, 17 May 2024, reads “P 2024 Super Cool Cats Ent., under exclusive license to Dvpper digital LTD.” That phrasing matters: an exclusive licence is not a sale. The imprint still holds the recordings and has granted Dvpper Digital exclusive rights for a period. Deezer labels the same release “Super Cool Cats Entertainment” and omits the licensee.
From there the credits scatter: “P 2026 SIGNATURE MUSIC GROUP” on “OLEKU II”, “P 2026 Red Cup Village / Super Cool Cats” on “One African Passport, One African Currency”, “P 2026 Strteam Ent” on “Gimme Ya All”, and the Deezer labels “Dapper Music & Entertainment” and “RoadHouse Jalingo” on two more. Five credited rights holders across three years is the signature of release-by-release distribution, not one label relationship.
The company behind the credit was bought for $394m#
This part is documented. Warner Music Group’s quarterly report for the period ended 31 December 2022 states that “on December 16, 2021, the Company purchased all outstanding shares of Theory Entertainment LLC d/b/a 300 Entertainment, an independent U.S. record label. The final consideration paid was determined to be $394 million, which reflects the base purchase price of $400 million, adjusted for, among other items, working capital.” The same filing records that Warner “acquired 300 Entertainment and subsequently launched 300 Elektra Entertainment, or 3EE”.
So the entity named in Ice Prince’s phonogram credits stopped being independent nine months after his last release under it. The filing establishes that the credited company changed hands in full. It does not establish what its contract with him said, whether any of his recordings were among its assets at completion, or whether rights had reverted. A share purchase moves a company, and the contracts sit inside it.
Apple and Deezer do not agree about who his label is now#
On his two most recent albums the platforms contradict each other outright. Starters, the June 2025 record with the producer Chopstix, reads “P 2025 Super Cool Cat” on Apple and carries the label “Chocolate City Music” on Deezer. Testimony of Grace, 1 May 2026, reads “P 2026 Opstream Music” on Apple and again “Chocolate City Music” on Deezer. Both were read on 25 October 2026.
These cannot both be right. One of two major storefronts is telling listeners that a Nigerian rapper’s current records belong to a label he was reported to have left in 2016. This desk cannot say which is correct, and does not report a return to Chocolate City Music on the strength of a Deezer label string. The disagreement is the finding.
The imprint has four names and no register#
Super Cool Cats appears under four strings: “Super Cool Cats” (2018), “Super Cool Cats Ent.” on Apple (2024), “Super Cool Cats Entertainment” on Deezer the same year, and “Super Cool Cat”, singular, in 2025. Whether these are one legal entity could not be established.
Nor could the company. Nigeria’s Corporate Affairs Commission publishes no machine-readable search this desk could query, so a Nigerian registration can be neither confirmed nor ruled out. Companies House in the United Kingdom, worth checking since diaspora imprints are often British-registered, needs an API key this desk does not hold. A MusicBrainz label query returns nothing. What exists is Ice Prince’s own account, given in a March 2021 interview: “I set-up my own company called Super Cool Cats, which I got a full endorsement from Chocolate City for, and I started running my own company.” A statement is not a register.
The founding is contradictory too. On 20 May 2016 Ice Prince confirmed on Cool FM that his Chocolate City contract had ended, and had been over for some years. Three days later, coverage of a Chocolate City Group press conference described Super Cool Cats as an imprint under Chocolate City Music, owned and headed by Ice Prince, with M.I Abaga framing it as the parent’s “investment in the two new imprints”, the other being Jesse Jagz’s JagzNation. Leaving a label and running an imprint inside it are different structures with different economics. The documents do not resolve which applied here.
What this means for artists#
A credit is not a contract, and its absence is not a release. The 300 line vanishing after March 2021 tells you what was delivered to stores, not that an agreement ended. Terms survive long after credits stop. To know whether you are free, read the reversion clause.
Ask which word your deal uses. A distribution deal moves your records and usually leaves you owning them. A record deal can transfer the masters outright. “Record and distribution deal” does not distinguish between the two, and the distinction decides who owns your catalogue in twenty years.
Undisclosed terms are normal, and they are also a cost. Six years on, nobody outside the parties knows what Ice Prince was paid, for how long, or for which territories. That is his right. It also means no younger artist in Jos or Lagos can use the deal as a benchmark.
Ask what happens if your label is sold. Fifteen months after he signed, the counterparty stopped being independent. Warner did not buy Ice Prince. It bought every share in the company holding whatever contract he had. A change-of-control clause is an ordinary thing to request.
Spell your company the same way every time. Royalty systems match on text. Four strings for one imprint, and two platforms naming different labels for one album, is a known route to money sitting in suspense accounts.
Limits of this record#
No registry corroborates the credit chain. A MusicBrainz release query for Ice Prince returns a count of zero, so the chain rests on two commercial storefronts and nothing independent. MusicBrainz does type 300 Entertainment as a distributor, which is suggestive, not determinative.
The signing date is unresolved. 4 September 2020 is the announcement date, carried by the trade report and matching the release of the first single bearing the credit. Secondary commentary places the signing earlier, including in 2019, and attributes to Ice Prince a May 2020 remark that he had signed “last year”. Neither was traceable to a document this desk could read, so those claims are flagged, not adopted, as are characterisations of the deal as one of the largest an African rapper has signed.
The current status of the arrangement could not be established. No announcement, filing, interview or report stating that it ended, lapsed or was renewed was located, and searches of 2022 to 2024 coverage found nothing. This piece does not say he was dropped or that he left.
Two further gaps. A reported Audiomack upload of “Make Up Your Mind” crediting Super Cool Cats rather than 300 Entertainment could not be confirmed, because requests to the track page returned no label or copyright data, so it is not asserted above. And Jos to the World, the 2016 album reported as launching the imprint, appears in neither platform’s catalogue, so its credit could not be checked.
Everything above was read on 25 October 2026 from Apple Music release pages, the iTunes lookup interface, Deezer album records, Warner Music Group’s quarterly filing for the period ended 31 December 2022, MusicBrainz queries, the September 2020 announcement coverage, two May 2016 reports of the split and imprint launch, and a March 2021 interview. Consideration is recorded as not disclosed, which is not the same as nil. The deal record carries the full source list and every caveat.