Black Market Records Signed Three East African Artists to Exclusive Deals. A Ugandan Court Has Voided One Contract, and Kenya’s Copyright Tribunal Has Frozen the Other Two.

Black Market Records, a Sacramento, California label that built an East African roster through what it calls “Black Market Afrika,” signed exclusive recording agreements with artists in Uganda and Kenya between 2020 and 2021. Three of those artists have since challenged the label’s ownership claims over their own recordings in court. One has already won: Uganda’s High Court declared his contract void in April 2025 and ordered damages. Two more are in progress: Kenya’s Copyright Tribunal froze the label’s claims over their catalogues in May 2026, pending a full hearing that, as of this writing, has not concluded. A fourth thread, a California capacity question that could undercut every one of the label’s African contracts at once, remains open and unresolved by any court this desk could find.

One label, three artists, two countries

Black Market Records was founded in Sacramento in 1989 by Cedric Singleton and built its early catalogue on West Coast hip hop. Its own public record and that of its roster show it later expanded into East Africa, styling the arm “Black Market Afrika,” signing acts across the Gengetone and Arbantone scenes that defined Nairobi’s streaming charts from roughly 2018 onward, and into Uganda. The three artists at the centre of this dispute are Bruno K (Bruno Kiggundu), a Ugandan singer; Fathermoh (Moses Otieno Ojwang), a Kenyan rapper who recorded both solo and as part of the group Mbuzi Gang; and Harry Craze (Harry Otieno Adoyo), formerly of the group Rico Gang until it disbanded in December 2023. All three say the label claimed ownership over their recordings under contracts they now argue were invalid from the start, and all three say that claim translated into real harm: copyright strikes and takedown notices on YouTube and Spotify that cut into their own streaming numbers.

Uganda: a contract declared void

Bruno K signed a one-year exclusive recording artist agreement with Black Market Records LLC on 12 May 2020, negotiated on the label’s side by Cedric Singleton Lychern and Kisame Shadrack Shagaf. He recorded one song under it, did not renew when it expired in May 2021, and later found the label still filing copyright complaints against his music with YouTube, which disabled his channel. He sued in Uganda’s High Court, Commercial Division, on 24 November 2022. An interim ruling on 23 January 2024, reported directly by the Monitor, restrained the label from making further ownership claims to streaming platforms pending trial, with the judge, Patricia Mutesi, noting that “there is a real likelihood that this conduct of raising copyright claims against Kiggundu’s songs will continue.”

The final judgment came on 1 April 2025. Reported directly by the Daily Star (Uganda), it declared the May 2020 agreement null and void, found that the label had infringed Bruno K’s copyright, and ordered a total of UGX 130 million in damages, UGX 100 million general and UGX 30 million aggravated, plus an accounting of royalties within 30 days. News outlets differ on the award’s interest rate, one citing 16 and 15 percent on the two damages amounts, another a flat 14 percent; neither detail changes the ruling’s substance. The case is cited as Kiggundu aka Bruno K v Black Market Records Entertainment-SMC Ltd & Ors, HCCS 1025 of 2022, [2025] UGCommC 42. This desk located that citation on the Uganda Legal Information Institute’s own index but could not render the underlying judgment text: every request returned the court portal’s own access-denial page. The account above rests on five independent Ugandan outlets (the Monitor, the Daily Star, the Independent, Matooke Republic and Uganda Radio Network) that agree on the date, the judge, the outcome and the order to account for royalties, a higher bar of corroboration than a single source, even without the primary text in hand.

Kenya: two more claims, frozen but not decided

Fathermoh says he signed his own exclusive agreement with Black Market Records LLC and related entities in 2021, covering production, distribution and management in exchange for a 20 percent royalty share and 50 percent of publishing rights. He accuses the label of claiming ownership over 63 songs he released between 2020 and 2024 and of issuing copyright strikes that, he says in his own filings, cut his Spotify monthly listeners from roughly 80,000 to 46,000 in a single month and hit a YouTube channel that had carried 228,000 subscribers. Harry Craze’s dispute is narrower in scope but the same in kind: he names three specific tracks, “Matopare,” “Luku Ni Pyam” and “Diglo,” which he says were pulled from platforms and may have been monetised without his consent, and is seeking Sh5.79 million in damages. Fathermoh’s claim is for Sh87.6 million.

Fathermoh tried Kenya’s High Court first. A ruling dated 19 March 2026, in Ojwang v Black Market Records LLC & another, struck out his suit there in its entirety, which this desk found via the Kenya Law citation index but, as with the Ugandan judgment, could not render directly; the court’s portal returns the same access-denial response to every request. What is independently confirmed by direct Kenyan reporting is where the matter went next: the Copyright Tribunal, chaired by Elizabeth Lenjo. On 22 May 2026, the tribunal certified both the Fathermoh and Harry Craze matters as urgent and issued ex parte interim orders the same day, restraining Black Market Records LLC, Black Market Media LLC and Cedric Singleton, jointly and severally, from “claiming ownership, commercialising, monetising, publishing” the two artists’ works, and from interfering with their performances, concerts and promotional campaigns, until the cases are heard. The respondents’ response was due 28 May 2026, with a directions hearing set for 4 June 2026. This desk found no report of a conclusion to either case since. These are interim, ex parte orders. They record that a tribunal found enough in the artists’ filings to justify freezing the label’s claims while the dispute is heard; they are not a ruling on who actually owns the recordings.

The capacity question neither tribunal has settled

Running underneath both the Ugandan and Kenyan cases is a narrower, more mechanical argument: that Black Market Records LLC may not have had the legal capacity to sign any of these contracts at all. Fathermoh’s filings, as reported by Kenyan outlets, say the California Secretary of State has listed the company as “Suspended – FTB/SOS” since March 2013, a dual suspension by the Secretary of State and the state’s tax authority that, under California law, generally bars a suspended entity from enforcing its own contracts. If accurate, that status would predate both the 2020 Bruno K agreement and the 2021 Fathermoh agreement by seven and eight years respectively. This desk attempted to check the claim directly against the California Secretary of State’s own business search and could not: the site’s bot-protection service blocked every request with an automated “request blocked” response, and a parallel attempt through a commercial aggregator was blocked the same way. The claim is therefore reported here as what it is, an allegation made in tribunal filings and repeated by Kenyan press, not a fact this desk independently confirmed.

The label’s own countersuit

Black Market Records has not confined its response to Kenya. A docket listing for the US District Court, Central District of California, shows a case, 2:26-cv-02952, opened on 19 March 2026, the same date as the Kenyan High Court’s strike-out ruling, with Black Market Records, LLC as plaintiff against Moses Otieno Ojwang, Harry Otieno and a third party named Canvass Records, under a cause of action of copyright infringement, 17 U.S.C. §501. One Kenyan outlet describes a different claim, a $1 million breach-of-contract suit filed in California before the Kenyan proceedings began. This desk could not access the underlying complaint, since the docket host blocked automated requests and the matter sits behind the US federal courts’ PACER paywall, and so cannot say which characterisation, copyright infringement or breach of contract, or both, is correct. Canvass Records’ role in the dispute could not be established from any source checked.

What this means for artists

For an artist signing with an independent label anywhere in East Africa, this dispute is a working example of what an “exclusive” contract can and cannot do if the entity signing it turns out not to have been able to contract at all. A void agreement does not just fail to transfer rights going forward, a Ugandan court has now said it never transferred anything, which is why Bruno K’s win came with a declaration the contract never existed rather than merely that it had ended. The same argument now sits, unresolved, in front of Kenya’s Copyright Tribunal. Separately, this dispute reached the office of Kenya’s president: Fathermoh, producer Vic West and Harry Craze went to State House on 1 April 2026, where President William Ruto met them along with other Gengetone and Urbantone artists, told them “I have facilitated legal support to ensure they are adequately represented in court,” and directed Parliament’s majority leader to fast-track the Creative Economy Bill 2026. Reporting around that meeting put the wider group’s combined losses at over 700 songs to foreign-label contracts generally; no source checked ties all 700 specifically to Black Market, so that figure describes the scene’s problem, not a confirmed tally against this one label. For any artist weighing a label’s exclusivity clause against its royalty split, the lesson sitting in two separate court systems right now is the same one: the signature on the contract is not proof the other side could lawfully sign it.

Afrobeats Wire found no reporting on the Kenyan Copyright Tribunal matters dated after the 4 June 2026 directions hearing despite a direct search, and could not render the underlying Ugandan or Kenyan court records directly due to access restrictions on both court portals. This record will be updated if a further ruling is reported.