Stay Low Announced a Label Partnership With Priddy Ugly’s GAS in March 2021. The Credit Line Carried It for Three Months, Then Dropped It.

In March 2021, two independent South African labels told the trade press they were going into business together. Johannesburg’s Stay Low, the record label and management arm of Steyn Entertainment, said it would “exclusively release, distribute and market projects” jointly with GAS, the label founded by rapper Priddy Ugly. Priddy Ugly, born Richardo Moloi, would step into a record label executive role alongside Stay Low’s head, Vaughn Thiel. His next album, the announcement said, would be the partnership’s first release.

No money, equity or percentage appears anywhere in that announcement, and nothing in the public record since names a figure either. What can be checked is simpler and, on the evidence, less durable than the press language suggested: the joint credit line that followed the announcement lasted three months, then stopped appearing on anything Priddy Ugly has released since.

What the announcement actually said

Two South African outlets, Hype Magazine and The Plug, carried the news on and around 12 March 2021, both naming the same two parties and quoting the same two executives. “This partnership with STAY LOW is special because we share the same vision and passion for cultivating talent,” Priddy Ugly said. Thiel called him “one of the most talented artists I have had the pleasure of working with.”

Both pieces describe GAS, short for Global African Sounds, as Priddy Ugly’s own independent label. “I started GAS as a response to the lack of infrastructure in my neighbourhood,” he said at the time. Neither report states what GAS is as a legal entity: not a company number, not a jurisdiction of incorporation, not a parent or holding structure. This desk could not find one either. No register search under “Global African Sounds” or “GAS” in South Africa or the UK returned a matching entry.

What the announcement promises is specific in shape, if not in terms: the two labels would release, distribute and market projects together, and Priddy Ugly would take an executive role. That is a label partnership, in the loose sense the industry uses the word. It is not, on the documents obtained, a joint venture entity, a transfer of masters, a publishing deal or an equity stake. Hype Magazine’s framing was unambiguous about what would prove the partnership was real: Priddy Ugly’s then-forthcoming sophomore album would be “the first official STAY LOW x GAS release.”

What the credit line shows

Apple Music’s phonogram credits, the “P-line” that a rights holder attaches to a recording at the point of delivery, are not a contract and not a filing. They are a running, dated record of who told a digital service they owned what, and when. Checked against Priddy Ugly’s catalogue, they tell a specific story.

Two singles released in the three months after the announcement, Rainbow (19 March 2021) and Never Pen Era (11 June 2021), both carry the credit “℗ 2021 STAY LOW/GAS Distributed by Ditto Music.” That is the joint credit the partnership promised, and it appears exactly where you would expect it, right after the announcement.

Then it stops. The sophomore album Hype Magazine had already named as the partnership’s first release did not arrive on that timeline. It came out 18 months later than the announcement implied, in September 2022, as MUD. Its credit reads “℗ 2022 STAY LOW Distributed by Ditto Music.” No GAS. Every Priddy Ugly release since, including the albums DUST (2023) and DUST DLX (2025), carries “STAY LOW” alone. Stay Low’s own website, checked directly, does not mention GAS or Priddy Ugly anywhere on it today; its artist roster lists six other names.

Three explanations are consistent with what is public, and none of them can be confirmed from the documents this desk obtained. The partnership could have wound down formally, with neither side issuing a statement to that effect. Priddy Ugly’s executive role could have continued in substance while the joint rights credit was dropped from delivered metadata for reasons unrelated to the business relationship. Or the arrangement, from Stay Low’s side, could simply have reverted to what the credit line shows now: Stay Low as sole phonogram owner, GAS absent. No source, including either party’s own channels, states which.

Why the distinction matters

This is a small deal next to the catalogue acquisitions and distribution contracts that usually fill this column, and that is exactly why it is useful. The gap between what a label partnership announcement promises and what a phonogram credit later confirms is the same gap that sits underneath much larger deals in African music, just easier to see at this scale because there are only seven relevant documents to check instead of seventy.

An “executive role” is not an ownership stake. A joint marketing-and-distribution arrangement is not a joint venture entity unless someone can point to the entity. And a credit line that appears on two releases and then disappears is evidence that something changed, not evidence of what. Reporters, and the artists reading about deals like this one, routinely collapse all of that into “signed a deal,” which flattens four different legal relationships into one word.

What this means for artists

If you are an independent artist in Priddy Ugly’s position, weighing a label partnership that comes with a title and a press release rather than a contract you can show a lawyer, the lesson from this record is not that the Stay Low-GAS arrangement was fraudulent or even unusual. It is that an announcement is not a rights document, and the only way to know what a partnership actually did to your masters is to check the credit line on your own releases after it happens, not to rely on the press release that preceded it.

GAS’s standing as a company, separate from Priddy Ugly personally, was never established in any public record this desk could find. That matters if you are an artist being asked to sign with, or partner alongside, a label whose legal identity you cannot verify independently of the person running it: there is no register entry to check your partner’s other obligations, prior debts or existing commitments against. That is not proof of a problem. It is an absence of the paper trail that would let you, or a court, tell the difference.

Neither Stay Low nor Priddy Ugly has published a statement on the current status of the partnership. Stay Low’s own website, checked directly for this piece, does not currently describe GAS as an active label partner. This record will be updated if either party makes a statement, or if a later release changes the credit-line pattern described above.