Three different ownership statements sit on CKay’s “Love Nwantiti” catalogue within the same fourteen-month window, and they do not describe the same thing happening to the same recording at the same time. The remix that actually charted and carried the song around the world on TikTok, released February 2020, is credited to Chocolate City Music alone. Three regional remixes Warner Music South Africa built afterward, for North African, French and German audiences, are credited to Chocolate City under an exclusive licence to Warner. And an acoustic version released in October 2021, nearly a year into CKay’s Warner deal, reverts to a Chocolate City credit with no Warner wording at all, one week before a fourth remix of the same song carries the licence language again.
None of that is necessarily wrong. It is, as far as this desk can establish from the companies’ own registry filings and from the trade press that covered the deal at the time, simply undocumented.
What changed hands, and when#
Chocolate City Music signed CKay in 2016. He recorded “Love Nwantiti” while on the label’s roster, and the version that made him famous, a slowed-down remix featuring Joeboy and Kuami Eugene, was released on 14 February 2020. Apple’s own catalogue record for that specific product reads “℗ 2020 Chocolate City Music,” full stop. Deezer’s independent record agrees: label field “Chocolate City Music,” the same release.
On 27 November 2020, Warner Music South Africa announced on its own account that it had signed CKay directly. “We’re thrilled to welcome @ckay_yo to the Warner Music family,” the post read, adding that his “first major label debut” was due in 2021. Billboard’s own reporting, read in full by this desk rather than summarised, uses the industry term for what happened next: CKay was “upstreamed” from Chocolate City to Warner Music South Africa, with Chocolate City Music licensing the already-recorded “Love Nwantiti” to the major. His US recording contract, Billboard states, sits separately with Atlantic Records.
That licensing arrangement is visible in the registries, but only on specific products. CKay’s manager, Ogbolu Favour, told Billboard that once the song “was licensed from Chocolate City Music, the Warner team wanted to release different products of the song, so we had different remixes in different regions. We had the North African remix, East African remix, South African, Spanish and French [versions] featuring different people that speak different languages from different parts of the world.” Apple’s catalogue confirms the mechanism: the North African remix (featuring ElGrande Toto) and the French remix (featuring Franglish), both dated 21 August 2020, carry the line “℗ 2020 Chocolate City under exclusive license to Warner Music South Africa (Pty) Ltd.” A German remix, featuring Pronto and Eunique and dated 15 October 2021, carries the identical wording.
The version everyone actually streamed was never re-credited#
Here is the part that does not fit the tidy version of the story. The Joeboy and Kuami Eugene remix, the one that drove the TikTok wave, charted on the Billboard Hot 100 and is, by any reasonable measure, the “Love Nwantiti” the world knows, has never had its own credit line updated. Six years after its release and more than a year into Warner’s commissioned remix campaign, Apple and Deezer both still show it as Chocolate City Music’s alone, with no licence wording, no Warner name, nothing to indicate that a major label built a global rollout plan around it.
An acoustic version released on 8 October 2021 makes the picture messier still. It, too, carries a Chocolate-City-only credit, nearly a year after Warner’s own announcement and five months after Billboard’s reporting on the licensing structure. One week later, the German remix of the same song reverts to the Chocolate-City-under-licence-to-Warner wording. Within the same fortnight, two products tied to the same song carry two different ownership statements.
Meanwhile, recordings CKay made after signing to Warner directly, rather than licensed in from his Chocolate City catalogue, show a cleaner picture. “Felony,” introduced in Warner’s own 27 November 2020 announcement as his first release under the new deal, carries “℗ 2020 Warner Music South Africa” with no Chocolate City name anywhere on it, confirmed independently by Deezer’s label field. So does “Boyfriend,” “Emiliana” and the “Kiss Me Like You Miss Me” singles that followed through 2021 and into 2022, and so does the “Axel & Dj Yo!” remix of “Love Nwantiti” itself, released 9 September 2021, which drops the Chocolate City name entirely and names Warner Music South Africa as sole owner, no licence wording at all.
So three different ownership statements exist across the catalogue for material connected to one song: Chocolate City alone, Chocolate City under exclusive licence to Warner, and Warner alone, with no public document establishing which product falls into which category or why. One detail sharpens the picture further. Warner’s own 27 November 2020 post named 4 December 2020 as the drop date for “Felony.” Both Apple’s and Deezer’s registries independently date the actual release to 25 November 2020, two days before the announcement that described it as still upcoming.
What this desk could not establish#
No consideration, royalty rate, or term for the Chocolate City to Warner Music South Africa licence appears in any source read for this record. That is a real, publishable answer: not disclosed, not a number this desk is prepared to estimate.
A statement widely attributed to CKay in May 2021, denying that he was signed to Chocolate City, is cited across secondary coverage of this story. This desk attempted to fetch the page carrying that statement directly, by an automated reader and by a direct request from this server, and received an HTTP 403 response both times. Nothing in this piece or in the deal record relies on that statement, because this desk could not read the primary document itself.
Nigeria’s Corporate Affairs Commission publishes no searchable register, so the corporate relationship between Chocolate City Music and the wider Chocolate City Group, the subject of a separate 2019 convertible-loan record on this site, could not be re-verified against CKay’s specific licence. Neither Chocolate City nor Warner Music Group was asked for comment.
Where the story ends up: an artist-owned holding company#
CKay exited Warner Music South Africa in April 2025. Confirming the split directly to Premium Times, he said: “Every journey has a beginning and an end, and my journey with Warner Music South Africa was significant, which I’m grateful for. Now it’s time for me to explore new energy and horizons.” He had already launched Boyfriend Music, described in that reporting as a publishing and management company, in August 2024.
His first release after the Warner exit, the EP “CKay The Second,” arrived on 13 June 2025 carrying a cleanly written credit: “℗ 2025 CKay Holdings LLC under exclusive license to AWAL Recordings America, Inc.” That is the one credit line in this entire catalogue that states, without ambiguity, who owns the recording and who merely has a licence to distribute it. CKay Holdings LLC, a company controlled by the artist, owns the master. AWAL, a distribution and label-services company, has an exclusive licence to exploit it. Nothing is pipe-separated, nothing contradicts itself across formats, and nothing needs a registry audit to parse.
What this means for artists#
“Upstreaming” is a real mechanism, and it does not automatically update every product in your catalogue. When a major signs you directly out of an independent label relationship, your new recordings and your old ones can end up governed by different documents, credited differently, and moving through different approval chains. If your breakout hit predates the new deal, check whether its credit line was ever actually updated, because the answer may be no even years later.
The version that made you famous is not always the version your new label controls. Warner built five regional remixes of “Love Nwantiti” under licence from Chocolate City. The original, the one with the most streams, stayed outside that structure throughout. If a label is building a campaign around your song, ask specifically which product the campaign licence covers, not just whether “the song” is covered.
A clean exit deserves a clean credit, and you can write one yourself. “X under exclusive licence to Y” names an owner and a licensee in one unambiguous phrase. CKay’s post-Warner catalogue uses exactly that wording, with his own holding company as the named owner. Earlier years of the same catalogue used no licence wording at all on products that, by any account of the underlying deal, should have carried it. The fix costs nothing and it is the difference between a credit a collecting society can act on and one it has to guess at.
Hold your masters in an entity you control, not in whichever company happens to be distributing you this year. CKay Holdings LLC sits above the AWAL relationship the way an owner should sit above a service provider. If AWAL’s role ever changes, the holding company does not have to change with it. A masters credit that names only the current distributor, with no separate owner named, leaves nothing standing if that relationship ends.
CKay and the “Love Nwantiti” masters: quick answers#
Who owns the masters to CKay’s “Love Nwantiti”?#
The version that charted is credited to Chocolate City Music alone on Apple and Deezer. Regional remixes Warner Music South Africa commissioned afterward carry a Chocolate-City-under-exclusive-licence-to-Warner credit instead.
Did CKay sell his masters to Warner Music South Africa?#
No document read for this record describes a sale. Warner’s own announcement and Billboard’s reporting both describe a licence from Chocolate City for specific products, not an acquisition of the underlying copyright.
Who owns CKay’s masters now, after he left Warner?#
His 2025 release “CKay The Second” credits CKay Holdings LLC, a company the artist controls, under exclusive licence to AWAL Recordings America, Inc. for distribution.
Any document establishing the full terms of the Chocolate City licence, or a statement from either company named in these credits, will be published here and the deal record updated. Neither party was asked for comment on this piece.
